


Home-Grown Adrenaline

by ObnoxiousMilletGuardian



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Chronic Pain, Depression, FFXV Brotherhood, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mild Sexual Content, Mild Smut, Mutual Pining, Noct Whump Week, NoctWhumpWeek, Other, Pining, Poison, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Vomiting, Whump, brotherhood era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-05-31 19:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15126080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObnoxiousMilletGuardian/pseuds/ObnoxiousMilletGuardian
Summary: Noctis always seems to struggle with keeping awake at the right times. There are people like Ignis, however, to try and help him.(Was previously an angsty eight-part fic for the Noct-Whump-Week event. Using the Day One prompts ‘Poisoned’, and ‘Stay Awake’. Fic has expanded since then because I can't write according to brief for the life of me.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So a short fic with prompts turned into an oversized… angst-ball mixed with Noctis character study, complete with a side dish of IgNoct…
> 
> (The Whump is in here, I promise. I also promise that one day, I'll actually follow a prompt properly and post it on time :o)

Prologue

  

He’s so sleepy. A yawn crawls up his throat, putting pressure on cheeks, and quickly a little hand goes to hide it as it takes over his entire face. He manages not to make a sound. He’s glad, because Father would absolutely skin him alive if he made any noise and interrupted the procession. As it is, seated directly in front of son in the royal box overlooking the grand citadel grounds, the King has made little inclinations of his head to the side every now and again that Noctis has taken note of. Small, unspoken reminders- _warnings-_ from a father to his five-year-old son: make not a peep and pay attention. 

Noctis is good at staying quiet, despite himself. He’s actually very very good at that and finds it real easy. But paying attention… not so much. Not that it’s his fault. The celebratory procession of the whatever (Crepera’s Acesnsion?? Who?? It’s something to do with history-) was boring. Boring boring boring and Prince Noctis was openly sick of parade with the slow trundling Chocobos and Kingsglaive marches and the Crownsguard doing some sort of ceremony. He knew he should be watching, and there were other important so-and-sos sitting around him too that he should have been looking and smiling at- but it was _boring…_  

There’s a marching band playing some mournful, repetitive tune. Big steel drums blinding in the sun being held by stony-faced guards were beating out a steady, pulsing rhythm, mixing with birdsong and feet marching, turn the air soporific. They were consistent, soothing, and maybe in the young Prince’s mind there’s a sparking of memory lost in baby blankets and the trauma of loss. Where a mother’s hand once tapped gently against a swaddled back and a baby with a dark clump of black hair on his head snuffled out his cries to the humming lullaby. Or, y’know, maybe the young boy prince right now was bored and tired and _really_ bored and the music was really low and calming. A perfect combination for young, pink eyelids to naturally begin drooping. Noct’s spine hunched forward in his official seat. The land of nod spread out before him, sweet sister sleep with her pillowy arms set to welcome him, ready to rescue another poor begotten child from ennui and beckon to the pastel colours of dreams and adventure.

And then someone mean poked Noctis in the ribs. 

The jab is swift and harsh like a lightning strike. Alright, so he doesn’t know what a lightning strike feels like, but he can it imagine it anyway and he bet it feels like this. Like a sharp, pointy, snotty finger from behind him that’s gone for the side of his smart suit. _Poking_ him, and making him almost yelp out loud in surprise before his teeth clamp down on his bottom lip. He hears a snotty-sounding snicker, a perfect partner to the snotty-poking finger. Noct turns around accusingly to face his attacker, the unholy bringer of wakefulness, whispering with all the wrath he can manage. 

“What was that for!”

Ignis lifts his chin, smug, whispering back, “You’re falling asleep. That’s not allowed.”

“But you _stabbed_ me-”

Ignis tries to lift his chin even higher, even though it means he can’t see Noctis and the sun bounces right off of his glasses. But it’s an impressive thing to do, he’s seen other adults do it. “Keep awake and I won’t have to do it.”

“You-”

“Boys.”

Young backs snap straight, at attention, fear pulling from their ribs. Two pairs of nervous eyes look forward and meet that of Regis, who has now turned, _fully_ , in his seat, to glare at the children. Or rather, he frowns a little bit at the both of them- but to them, it is a Glare. Scary, all encompassing, bringing the promise of a telling off.

“Remember what I promised you both if you kept nice and quiet during the ceremony?” 

Ignis nods solemnly. Noctis chews his lip, panicking. He cannot possibly jeopardise their chance of a fishing trip with Clarus. They’ll regret for like… a whole week. But Regis softens after the mention of the dire consequence, and hums to himself at whilst looking at the small, horrified faces. Yes, the message has sunk in. 

“I better not have to turn around again.”

(The final warning isn’t really needed, but Regis is a dad and warnings like that add gravitas (well, they do for Reg, anyway). Gods, children are bloody hard work. More so with the added test of a dull ceremony that he had to put them through. Surely Queen Crepera was a much livelier character than this-)

Seeing the back of Regis’s head means that Noctis can finally let out the breath he’s been holding. And that he can also turn back around and give a mini Caelum-esque glare of his own to his future advisor. Ignis’s cheeks are a little flushed from the shared chastisement, but at Noctis’s challenge he puts back on his haughty smile, folding his arms- another adult thing he knows adults do and wants to copy.

“See?” Iggy whispers, quieter than before, “behave, Prince Noctis.”

“I was behaving.” Noctis follows suit to whisper in a much more muted voice than before. He is very annoyed now. Embarrassed at the telling-off and angry that he was denied the nap that was going to be so good. He sticks his tongue for good measure, getting a scoff for it.

“You were sleeping.” Ignis retorts, “that’s the only time you do behave.” 

“So _you_ want me to sleep, then? Okay!”

Ignis rolls his eyes, reaching into his trouser pocket for a small spiral notebook that’s covered in jellyfish stickers (not his design work) and a well bitten-ended pencil. Noctis bares his teeth with glee, reaching out for the gifts in order to start a new and vicious battle of wits and cunning. He draws the three by three grid with scrawls a cross in the middle square, giving a cool glance to his opponent as he passes the notebook and pencil back. 

There’s another hour to go before the ceremony draws to a close, but Noctis is awake for all of it. Regis only has to give the Warning Tilt of the head once throughout. Where his ears pick up a sharp, angry gasp as Ignis snatches a sly victory during the twenty-sixth round of the lengthy tic-tac-toe tournament. But the King decides against intervening. Noctis’s got his head down and his eyes open, keeping up the appearance of the dutiful prince but underneath being the playful, engaging little boy that draws in so much warmth and love from the two people that adore him the most.


	2. Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, guys. I’ve been suddenly busy with work and college and life in general. Also… this fic got a lot bigger in my absence. Again, I am so sorry. I can’t keep my waffling in check nor follow a simple prompt for the sodding life of me <3

Part One

  

Prince Noctis of Insomnia is an eight-year-old boy, half asleep, sitting in the back of a car and complaining to Philo about his father (and his absence, again, and again, more of a constant than ever) and then the world just… _sparks._

Everything rips apart from under his feet in an exploding flash of burning and stabbing light. Screams and choking tear the night asunder in crimson as everyone around him dies. Copper tastes touch his tongue, and Philo- _Philo!-_ Philo’s skin rips in ways that a child’s mind doesn’t have the capacity to think it can happen, turning malleable as play dough, her body falling around him in a soft puddle. It’s her blood Noctis can taste, her blood that he’s bathed in, seeing it string through his fingers like mottled cotton.

He remembers a few other things from that night: The Marilith that had tried to kill him (definitely remembers that), and how his main caretaker had died saving the Prince. He also remembers how it flickered across his astonished thoughts at the time that there was something wrong with him:Noctis. The Prince. Where there were endless rolling blades of pain on a spinning wheel running back and forth across his back, and there was something wet near his leg. There was also all just all tired, tired, _tired._ Too tired to scream or cry even if it all hurt so much. He fell asleep as his father’s armiger swirled around the pitching corners of his vision, feeling a familiar hand holding the back of his damp head.

“Open your eyes for daddy, Noctis. Noctis- _open your eyes!_ ”

 

* * *

 

 The pain he is ‘gifted’ for having everyone around him die is some sort of weight. Dragging along with him, it is permanently attached to the bottom of his spine, putting unbearable pressure on his leg that often ricochets right up to his shoulder blades. It may go away from time to time. At Tenebrae, he’s granted entire weeks free from it, gratefully taking in the warmth of Sylva’s smile as she gently presses his cheek and laughs at his cheeky comments. He even gets a new best friend too. Luna is like no one he’s ever spoken to before. She tells him all the stories that he ever wants to hear and never seems to get fed up or tell him to go away, tucking a fussy lock of her pale hair behind her ear as she turns the delicate page of the story book. Everything seemed brighter at the palace. Even the sunshine pouring through the clean windows, dancing off of the white fluffy carpet, seems a different sheen of gold to the sun at home. It’s happier.

He’s still tired a lot. But it’s not a problem in the safety of the Fleuret household, not something that’s to be worried about. It’s accepted, even. No one makes him stay awake, and he lies content in Luna’s lap as she makes up new tales for them both. The sleeps at Tenebrae promise respite from the painful reality that digs in claws along his bones and has him screaming in the night for his lost nanny. He also gets his father more at the palace too, his proud form present amongst the rippling curtains. Regis smooths his son’s hair and tucks in the sheets and just sits with Noctis, hour after hour, just there _._ Not slipping from Noctis’s fingers, not backing out with a closed door and an empty promise.

The Marilith taught him that things get taken away. Much like Philo was literally ripped apart, the life of Tenebrae and all that it’s given Noctis also gets pulled from him too. Stretching far behind him in that copse of trees that drowned with the weight of all that blood. Luna was the lone, wafting symbol of sacrifice among the gun metal and reds that would set the sunlit rooms of the Fleuret household to ash. She got smaller and smaller, like a train retreating into a tunnel and Noctis couldn’t follow after her like he so wished to do.

Later, the only thing that always reminded Noctis that Tenebrae wasn’t some sort of warped fantasy, where Sylva and Philo crumple across each other like dolls, was the notebook Luna gave him. It was an elegant thing and he felt ashamed to fill it with his messy, misspelt words and innocent smiles- _I saw a painting of Shiva today and it reminded me of your hair-_ but he did it anyway, because Luna asked him to. After ruining her home, her family, her entire _life-_ it was the least he could do. And sometimes he added stickers.

 

* * *

 

 

The healing waters and charms from Queen Sylva’s stores that worked so well for managing Noctis’s pain were shoddily replaced with the best therapy Regis could get, along with the best medications, constant consultations, and reassessments. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t like before. It never was going to be. The leg brace terrified the bowels of Titan out of the young boy. Appearing to him an embracing monster that climbed up his thigh, promising an encumbering future until a few years of intense physiotherapy made it retreat. The tiredness didn’t go either, and much like the brace, grew into its own lumpy, suffocating monster. Unlike the brace, it didn’t go away. It wouldn’t go away, no matter what anyone said. No matter how many naps he snuck in, or lectures he endured from a doctor who told his father that ‘indulging’ Noctis in his sleep was somehow making the situation worse.

Noctis got used to it all… somehow. Because he didn’t know about the prophecy lingering around him, a shadowy aura seeking to suck the life out of him before his time. He didn’t know either that as the present was trying to rob him of any quality of life, his father wore himself out over worrying about his future. Regis does a decent job of hiding his own wasting away from his son up to a certain point, and Noctis’s just sees it as a trade. There’s more pain and exhaustion for less Regis in Noctis’s life as they both grow older.

When Noctis is eleven, the King falls ill with a particularly spiteful virus. Clarus lets it slip to Regis’s son as he attends the Amicitia household for an informal dinner that Regis’s condition seems to be exacerbated by stress. Noctis stabs at a piece of fried beef and nods, as if Clarus has just mentioned that it’s going to be cold outside tomorrow. He can’t get a firm grip on all the terminology, on what all of this _means,_ but he’s not willing to ask his father’s Second for any clarity on what’s wrong with his dad. What he does take away from it is the fact that somehow, it’s all his fault. Cos everything usually is.

 

* * *

 

 

Lots of things change. Go away, come back, turn different. The pain stays the same. The exhaustion does too. The nightmares sometimes twist a little, but more or less have their own regularity that only Noctis alone really understands (he’s given up trying to explain it to therapists). Hormones wade in like fucking bridge trolls as he approaches teenagerdom and latch to the sides of his brain, turning lots of things to mush.

Ignis is there too, as the years go by. Wondrously, he stays the same. Noctis comes back from the brink of the dark and the bright shimmering suns of Tenebrae an altered boy, but Ignis doesn’t seem to think that means he should abandon his Prince nor treat him any differently. He sticks at his main job, the one he’s been assigned to since he was six: he keeps Noctis on his feet, and if the situation calls for it, he keeps him preferably awake. He attends to Noctis with a tentative shake to the shoulder, a squeeze of the wrist, an understanding smile and sweet treats free from vegetables as bribes and consolations. He presses Noctis on, but never too hard, always encouraging with a firm voice. He’s the forever soft look that Noctis can turn to with confidence, knowing it won’t fade away as it sits behind bright metal frames that catch the desaturated glare of a sun through the rippling fog of the Wall.

Ignis is the axis in Noctis’s life, solid and firm, when everything else usually refuses to stay still and twirls around, making him queasy. In his tattered and torn up life, Ignis is _so_ important. Immovable always, as a decent pivot should be. More so when as Noctis becomes older, Regis becomes the biggest force that makes everything spin. Noctis cannot remember when it started happening: all of the illnesses, the turns, the several ailments. But they happen, and they happen, and all Noctis seems to hear about is how more messed up the King becomes with every passing month. Sliding into years of mild torment because of the exertion he puts himself under maintaining the city’s shield.

The Wall is but the thinnest of membranes against the world outside the Kingdom of Lucius that wants to destroy them all. Niflheim is the red and white tinge over most of Noctis’s nightly terrors, but he doesn’t know all that much about his Greatest Enemy™. He only knows really that because of them, he’s lost quite a fair bit already and that his father is turning into a shell of the hero that roams through Noctis’s childhood recollections. Regis fades into further shades of fragile translucence as he seems to change every time he sees his son, which in itself is a once in a blue moon kind of affair.

Weeks to months slide by, measured in Noctis’s calendar primarily by school holidays and exams, occasionally punctured by his father’s presence here and there. His desperation to see his dad is always backhanded by something new he spots about him when he does lock eyes with Regis. There’s a new protruding vein in Regis’s neck when he sits across from Noctis at the rare dinners they get to share together. They have a short chat in a citadel corridor and there’s a peppering of scorch marks around his father’s pupils, shimmering gold. The cane makes its appearance in later years, the leg brace reinforced, as if they were taking the leftovers from Noctis’s own and adding it to the King’s. There’s a small birthday celebration for the two of them, marred because Noctis sees a man far older than he should be, grey hair awash at his scalp and lines drawing an entire map of pain and affliction across a weathered face: he doesn’t recognise his father at all.

It pricked at Noctis. Bit at him like midges do on the edge of a fishing pond at high summer, nipping and nibbling, tearing tiny bits of his patience and itching incessantly. Sight of father’s suffering seemed to enhance his own excruciating mornings, following the nights ripped apart by the agony of his spine. The types of night-time where there was a physio not being available until the following day and a emergency-call doctor prissily telling his advisor that more sleep was the answer. At least Noctis had something that kept him from going near mad with the pain and uselessness of it all, there with soothing hands and glasses flashing in the low light of the bedside lamp. But refracting in the Prince’s head was how his father lingered in the same tormenting void too. Only he was a King, not hiding behind a tender arm and a duvet and Ignis's soft mumblings. No, Regis rose every morning, come what may, and lead Insomnia, protecting them all from the darkness at their door.

Noctis thinks about how in a few years, that’s supposed to be him. He’s going to be a King. More tired than ever. More tired than it’s thought possible. It’s so terrifying, he can barely stand to stomach the thought. Even if it so much as passes across his mind lighter than a dying breeze, connected to the simplest of things such as getting fitted with a new suit for some stupid swearing-in ceremony, it’s all enough to make him throw up with nerves and wish he could throw himself off the top of the citadel heights before he lets everyone down. 

No. No, no, no, no he can’t be a _King-_

 

* * *

 

 

Noctis is a Prince, but also now an older teenager with older teenager-y things to worry about. His father catches a cough during a delegation visit. Two days later, it ends up putting him in the citadel’s infirmary on the cusp of respiratory failure: turns out the King had a rather violent and advanced chest infection that he had somehow ignored until his body refused to let him do so.

-“ _What?_ ”, Noctis remembers yelling down the phone, forgetting that the Marshall was on the other end of the line, “How the fu-”-

It’s nothing and everything. Regis is expected to make a full recovery within a day or two now that he’s actually being made to lie down and take treatment, and Clarus waxes lyrical about his ‘idiot’ King not admitting he was unwell until he was almost passing out at the first official luncheon. Naturally the court is in a tizzy, trying to beat down the gossip that the King may be dying and hide it from their allies from outside the wall. But everyone else, Clarus, Cor… the rest of the royal household, are calm. Too calm. Because this is the way things are now. It’s a new standard of life. The King is weakening a lot more, he’s going to continue to do so. Everyone better get used to it, adapt to the illnesses, prepare for the inevitable, and of course always _walk tall-_

Noctis can’t walk tall. Somehow, for some reason, this isn’t something he can deal with. Out of all the countless illnesses and turns for the worse, this one lodges deep inside his chest and won’t release its jaws. He turns up at the hospital the night after his father is admitted, at an hour where everyone else is at home and in bed. He doesn’t know why he’s there, or why he wants to be there. He’s curled up into a ball outside the door to his father’s private room and he’s just... sort of sitting there. 

He hasn’t got an explanation for being at the infirmary. He’s probably not meant to be at the infirmary- as in, he’s probably not _allowed_. He didn’t clamour to go when he first got the call about his dad getting rushed in, and neither has Regis asked for his son since then. But now, hours on from all of that, he’s now here after skipping his afternoon tutorial and telling his evening staff to leave him alone. 

He thinks that he hasn’t done this hospital visit right. He meant to go into his father’s room and sit at his sleeping side, like a good dutiful son, a good _Prince_. But as his hand touched the door, he caught the ghost of his reflection in the plastic window, layered over the King’s awkwardly prone form. Noct saw his own pale, thin looking face, pulled down with a dour expression. Covered in spots and framed by the self-conscious hunch of his shoulders. His hair lank, unwashed, half falling over his eyes and half turning to bird’s nest because he still hasn’t gotten the hang of hair gel to hair ratios. Not to mention he hadn’t stopped running his hands through it since the early afternoon, so it looked even worse than normal.

Noctis stopped himself from opening the door. Terror sprung up through his throat at the sight of himself all barely there, filling his mouth with a salty, dry sickness. Because holy fuck- _look_ at him. Noct thinks on how he’s the future King- he was supposedly looking at a future King, and he doesn’t even know how to look like a teenager. Not even fit to tie his own shoelaces.

What the hell was Noctis doing? He wrenched his hand off of the handle, suddenly angry at the picture of his father framed in the window, oddly serene and peaceful if one could ignore the tubes and oxygen mask- rage hit the window pane and sailed through directly to his father, because what the hell was _he- Regis-_ doing? If he was going to leave this world, leave Lucis (and sooner, rather than later if all was going to be believed), was he really going to pass the Kingdom down to _Noctis?_  

Was the man stupid? Or just as hopeless as his son?

Noctis was fed up of thinking. Tired of it. Endless exhausting tirades of speakings in his own head never shutting up and remind him of how crap he was. He was going to turn on his heel and leave the infirmary and go back to his quarters. Forget Regis. Forget Insomnia. Forget his future. Even if he could only do it for a night, he would. But a sharp look down the long corridor of his father’s ward with its darkened quiet extinguished the rage as quickly as it had flared, leaving a cold shiver in its wake that twisted up his neck. Noctis didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to leave his dad alone, even if he was too much of a coward to actually enter his room and sit with him. And that resolve for his father was stronger than any resolve he had for himself and for what he wanted to do, which in fact was run the fuck away from everything.

His legs buckled with the strain of standing for too long; it had added to the decision to stay, as poorly minded as it was. He leant against the wall, next to door, and slid down it. Knees made their home pressed up against this thumping heart, the tick of the oxygen meter from his father’s room trickled through the plaster and into his back, pushing at their shared magic of enhanced senses, keeping rhythm with their breathing and beatings of their hearts.

Noctis doesn’t know how long he’s been there. Feet had scuttled past him now and again, either medical staff or his father’s security detail. Sometimes they paused a little in front of him, or the strides slowing suspiciously by. Taking in the surprise of him, the Prince of Lucis, looking like a total scruff ball still in his school uniform and sitting outside his father’s hospital room. But no one actually approaches him or calls out his name. They’re either too scared to, or maybe like how he doesn’t know if he’s meant to be there, they don’t know if they have any authority to tell him to haul his royal ass off of the polished floor and leave his dad be. 

Hours pass. He should move. Stretch out from being all curled up that’s cramping his limbs. There’s a familiar cloud of ache gathering at the lower part of his back, protesting from the unnatural position. Gladio would kick his ass if he found him like this, awake in the middle of the night and wrecking his joints with poor posture (he’ll notice it in training tomorrow, for sure). Noctis has thought about calling Gladio right now, although he doesn’t know what he would say. Whether he would tell the truth of where he is and what he’s doing, or just shoddily pretend that he’s calling his shield in the middle of the night for no good reason. Calling Prompto is kinda out of the question for that exact same reason. Besides, who the hell wants to get a call from him at this time of night? Where all he feels he can talk about is how exhausted he is, and how he needs someone to fix the mess that is himself. About how he feels about his life and his father being so ill and weak, brought to his knees by a mere chest infection, and how that is just so plain fucking frightening.

More hours go by. Maybe. Noctis doesn’t check his phone. It sits a stone in his pocket, untouched, battery wilting to a deadweight. He keeps himself focused on the noise from his father’s room, the continuous touching of senses as one sleeps and the other is so awake it hurts his ears. Noctis’s knees stay right up by his cheeks, arms pulling himself tighter together like it helps lock in the anxiety ravaging his head.

Someone on the ward, maybe a nurse who’s walked past him too many times, probably makes a call. And that call probably leads to someone else who might call another, and another, and that’s why Ignis turns up at three in the morning to rescue Noctis from himself. Or maybe he’s here out of instinct, and there’s no one who’s called him at all. He just knew that Noctis was there, and appears because he always knows where to find Noctis in this spinning world and bring it to a standstill. 

Noctis is dozing into his knees by that time, almost asleep from sheer fatigue, and then the sound of clipped shoes on the polished linoleum knock him awake. It’s a sweet song to his buzzing ears, because he could never mistake those footsteps. He lifts his head, squinting through the bleary haze of half sleep to see the silhouette of Ignis standing over him, outlined by the fluorescent ceiling lights and casting him in a strange, halo-esque glow. It’s the best thing Noctis has ever seen, ever.

“Hey, Ignis.”

His voice is groggy and thick, making his greeting near incoherent. Ignis smiles nonetheless, bending a little with his hand held out to him. If he’s concerned or even irritated at how he’s had to go and fetch his Prince in the small hours of the morning, there’s not a trace of it in the crystal regard he locks with Noctis’s own half lidded gaze.

“Come on, Noct.”

Noctis lifts his own hand to take that of his advisor’s. But then he doesn’t seem to move. He’s meant to get to his feet and wipe the dust off of school blazer and go down the corridor with Ignis, and in his mind, he does exactly that. In the real world, he stays sitting all huddled up on the floor but still holding Ignis’s hand, lost in the way those fingertips dig into his palm in anticipation, saying nothing.

“Noct?”

What the hell. How sleep deprived is he?

“Yeah.” Noctis shakes his head, trying to find some sense in himself, “yeah, sorry.”

He does get up this time, although he still feels like he’s not really there, like he hasn’t moved at all. The centre of his gravity of reality lies in the fingers he still clings to as he attempts to stay steady on his feet, pain tingling up and down his body. His question to Ignis seems to tumble out of his mouth without any thought or control put into it.

“You uh- you staying the night?”

Once more, Ignis seems to do a damn good job of hiding any apprehension about his Prince’s bizarre behaviour. He doesn’t even question it, still smiling away, tilting his head in that fond way that he does. Noctis feels a bit more in his fingers, a warmth spreading up through his arm, pushing back the fog that’s sat in his head since he got to the infirmary. 

“Certainly,” Ignis replies to the understated plea, “if you wish it.”

Noctis does, as there will be a hot water bottle and painkillers and the sweet balm that is just Ignis’s company instead of a lonely morning wishing that he wasn’t himself. 

“Gladio will call you around nine-ish.” Ignis adds, “He’s been badgering me all day to cancel your schedule tomorrow so that he can take you fishing.”

“Did he win you over?” 

“You infer that there was a battle to be won. I’ve been told to make brownies and ask if you would like to take ‘blondie’ with us. I assume he meant Prompto.”

Noctis snorts. The warmth continues to course through him, building into a sense of something that feels like affection for those that surround him, even on the other end of Ignis’s phone. But even as he basks in the balminess of the love he has for his friends, the sounds of the machinery and heartbeats from his father’s room and the stillness of the late-night air infuse and change the colours of his sudden burst of good mood. Preying upon his happiness before it can bloom, turning everything back to familiar greys and charcoal that block up his brain.

Noctis thinks about death a lot. He can’t help it. He can’t. Not when it lies layered in between both his sleeping and waking breaths, scattering memories and the present through the inanest parts of everyday life. It doesn’t really have much to do with his dad’s weakening condition, although he’ll admit that it can exacerbate the strength of those thoughts. But when he was a child, death dealt him a series of crude lessons in the givings and takings of precious things, and of how people who found themselves tied to him beyond their control often got their strings severed before their time.

At this moment in his life, three strings wrap around and knot and loom in-between the bone and muscle of what makes him, him, and none of those attached to those strings asked to be so. Ignis was assigned to him at an age when he probably didn’t know the words in which to protest, and Gladio is at his side by the forces of blood and birthright. Prompto could stand out as the anomaly, perhaps, but even that friendship feels less spontaneous than its meant to be. Like two opposing poles snapping together when one magnet moved just an inch too close, and now Prompto is as inseparable in his life as if he’d been there since the beginning. Prompto even now jokes about the Crownsguard and training with the ‘hunks of beef’ all the time, and Noctis anticipates (even if he futilely prays against it) that they’ll turn into a request by his school friend to formally always be at his side before long.

Noctis sees the three of them and the fear waterlogs every sense. Every rational thought. Because he knows he’s going to lose them. Foolish as the idea is- but really, _is_ it so ridiculous? They swear to lay their life down for him because he happened to be born with a certain name to a certain family, and who’s to say that such oath of death won’t be put to the test on which the three of them will always pass?

“Noct?”

He’s spaced out. Drifting amongst the abysmal dark that’s splattered with burning, terrible thoughts. Ignis snaps him out of it. Brings him back to the present which has him standing outside his father’s hospital room at the wrong time of the day and losing himself in bad contemplations because he’s too drained to think of anything else. For a fleeting second, Noctis has the incredible urge to tell Ignis about all of this crap that goes on inside his head. Lift the latch underneath and release the rushing pressure of his own fears. Of how scared he is of losing Ignis, and Gladio and Prompto. That he thinks about his dad being gone and he knows he has to face that and maybe he could, in time, but that he even has to think like that tears him apart. About how bone weary and deathly fatigued he is from it, always, always, always, and that it _never_ goes away.

Instead, Noctis doesn’t say a thing. Makes a show of shaking his head. Acting all attentive. He shrugs.

“I’m tired, Iggy.”

A thumb runs across his palm, shocking him with the touch. He’s still clinging on to Ignis’s hand. He didn’t realise that he hadn’t let go of it when he stood up. But then, Ignis hadn’t let go either. Realising that Noctis needs his hold and simply obliged to provide it. Hasn’t thought any less of his Prince for having to do it. 

Something breaks then. Noctis internally laughs at himself. For all of it that has happened. The ridiculousness and incredulity of everything. Maybe one day something magical will occur to him, and he’ll wake up and will be able to actually get a hold on everything that’s going on in his shitty life and be the person he needs to be. Where he won’t need the comfort of a hand and more of the person attached to it. But for now, he doesn’t let go of those fingers clasped with his. Not even as they walk down the corridor together, heading through the pathways that lead back to his quarters and the hopeful promise of some sleep at last.

 

* * *

 

 

His father pulls through his bout of illness, and many more after that. Noctis never finds himself needing to spend random hours of an early morning sitting outside a hospital door again, but the spikes of anxiety he gets whenever news pass by his ears about the King’s state of health don’t lessen in their sharpness. He teaches Regis how to text during the King’s birthday banquet that same year. Regrettably, he also adds emojis to the lesson. Whenever his dad is in hospital now, he gets to know before everyone else because Regis sends him a little green face, followed by a laughing one. Because oh gods, back in the infirmary again. Isn’t life funny, son? 

Isn’t it  _just-_  

Noctis later moves out of the citadel on a mutual agreement with his Dad so that he gets a chance to try and make himself grow up. He also thinks privately that the physical distance from Regis might help himself adjust to the state of things between them. But in the end, it just makes things worse. He sees his father even less now there’s no opportunities for chance encounters in the citadel hallways, and even dinner isn’t a thing anymore when it takes so long to cross the city in rush-hour traffic.

It’s always the small things that hurt the most. Like papercuts. Noctis reminds himself often that this is just the way things are. That he knew a while back this was how things were going to be. He was going to lose his dad as he lost others before him, only this time it was going to be a lot slower, his father casually drifting out of his grasp inch by inch. He needs to just get used to it, like he did with everything else, and he was. Well- he was _trying._ He really was trying his hardest. He can’t tell anyone how hard he’s trying, because there’s no one to listen. Or so he thinks. He writes to Luna now more often than he ever did, but he can’t complain to her when she’s busy trying to be the Oracle and lead her people whilst the Niff’s hold a knife to the spine of her nation. He sends her his arcade tickets instead, because she finds them really funny for some reason and it cheers her up.

His friends are too busy doing what they’re best at. Prompto being Prompto, sending him answers for homework Noctis forgets to do and scouting for extra freebie stickers from comic books. Gladio is Gladio, working himself to the bone to become his Shield, taking Noctis to the limit in their sparring but not without the supports always in place. There with an iced bottle of water and talking through stretches for his back with a ruffle of his hair when they finish the exhausting training session. And Ignis…

Ignis is everything now, as well as the fixed star in Noctis’s maelstrom, because Noctis moves out of the citadel and realises he hasn’t a clue on how to look after himself. As always, Ignis is there to stop him from tripping over his own feet and get him out of bed on time. He is also, to Noctis’s absolute horror, the person Noctis’s brain decides above anyone else, to _develop a crush on_.

 

* * *

 

 

When the realisation hits, Noctis at first tries to reason with himself: Of course he got attracted to Ignis. It was inevitable, really. Ignis as just himself, aside from his effortless charm and ridiculously beautiful face, is the only person in Noct’s life who knows every inch of him without anything to hide. His only friend apart from Luna until he was about twelve or so. It’s your typical childhood-love bullshit, and the stupid idea of it all wants to make Noctis shove all those thoughts deep into some hellish hole in his brain that he never wants to reach again.

But they won’t go away. Like, they really, really _won’t go away._

It’s a nightmare. A total, total nightmare, lingering on top of all his other nightmares. He doesn’t need this, but there’s not much of a solution. Noct tries to- he doesn’t know- _direct_ the crush somewhere else. Like the attraction is some sort of beam that just needs a different target to focus on. He stares at people in school, any gender, any type, and he stares at hot people in the street- hell, he even stares at _Prompto_ and _Gladio_ from time to time. Looking, waiting, trying to figure it out. Hoping that the flutters across his muscles that he gets from looking at his retainer happen when looking at someone else. But no. Nothing.

Instead he wastes time reading into every little gesture that Ignis has done thousands of times before. Or not, given how things have somewhat changed with Ignis too in recent months as Noctis’s has attempted to act like a functional human being with an apartment. Emphasis on _attempted_ , because there’s no successes unless Ignis is involved; there to keep things in order and make sure Noctis hands in homework and eats something that hasn’t got a microwave or a kettle as part of the cooking process. Yet where Ignis always keeps at Noctis for putting one foot in front of the other, this time it feels so so much more different than in the past. Rather than stand at his shoulder, it feels as if Ignis is shouting instructions from the other side of the Wall. There’s no more physical closeness, no more kind touches on the arm or soft words. The smiles are less, as are the affectionate looks that burst through the clouds of Noctis’s mind.

Suppose it’s a part of growing up. A natural progression of polite distance that grows as a matter of courtesy, mixed with the idea of how Adults Should Behave. But for Noctis, all of that just seems plain fucking _weird_. He’s grown up with Ignis, been with him his entire life. Shared a bed with him, clung on to his fingers in the small hours of the morning, buried his head into his back without warning. Putting his stupid-ass crush aside on his poor advisor, the fact that Noctis now has to lose that part of Ignis along with everything else feels unbearable to deal with. Losing the touch that anchors him so much and keeps everything still, even for just for a second so he can catch his breath. Now Ignis is becoming less Noctis’s friend, and more his Retainer, complete with a capital R. Noct loathes every god damn second of it.

What can he do about it though? Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s just another thing to get used to, he supposes. To adjust to. Noctis tells himself that he should be grateful, that so long as he never loses Ignis, there’s fuck all to be complaining about. He should get over himself and just mature and act like a functional royal already. Something he tells himself every day, shrieking at himself over and over as he still fails at everything. Still struggles to deal with everything that happens and face the future that seems to be filled with more of the same, only amplified by a hundred.

He’s still really tired too.

“Noct. You better not be falling asleep over there.”

Sitting at the kitchen table in his apartment on a cloudy evening, chin propped on his hand, Noctis’s makes a show of lazily opening one eye to stare at Ignis by the stove putting together a stir fry. A placid face turns to a frown once Noctis sees the stacks of chopped vegetables sitting on the kitchen counter, but he doesn’t get to open his mouth and voice a protest in time. Ignis scoops all vegetables up with a swiftness that is quite frankly scary to look at and dumps them into the pan with a hiss of oil and a small smile to himself, pouring something else on top that sends a pleasant smell wafting up Noctis’s nose.

Both eyes are open now, as Noctis watches Ignis flutter about the kitchen without a split of hesitation, knowing what to do next, what step to undertake. Noctis doesn’t know what it is, or why, but it’s just so satisfying to observe. Looking at bright eyes furrowed behind thick frames (adds maturity to one's face, apparently), concentrating, those elegant fingers piling and gathering and pinching together, arms moving with a fluidness that resembles Noct’s own warp magic. A rush of something slick and warm pulses through Noctis’s chest as he continues to stare at Ignis, flapping about his heart. Familiar but still uncomfortable for him, because with every instance that reminds him of how much he fancies this impossible man, all the other recollections and associations come crashing in. The very fact that they’re so physically far apart from each other right now is a reminder in itself for Noctis of how things currently are, and how they will seem to be for the near future. It’s painful. More painful than the stupid love-sickness itself.

“Something wrong?” Ignis isn’t even looking at him, still absorbed in making dinner, but he can tell Noctis is watching him.

“Nope.” Heat rises up Noctis’s neck, and he shuts his eyes again, trying to block everything out and just listen to the sounds of chicken and vegetables frying in a pan and the careful clatter and clack of cooking.

“We need to go through this assessment from General Amicitia after dinner, you can hardly nap there.”

“So it’s alright if I nap somewhere else?”

Noctis gets a little snort of laughter. A hard-won victory these days, but he’ll take it all the same. Suppose it’s hard to find time to laugh at your Prince’s lame comebacks and jokes when you have a million other things to think about. Meanwhile, Noctis just wants to think about how good Ignis looks sweeping that heavy fringe off of his forehead so he can see what he’s doing, and that even though he’s joking about it, he really would like to sleep for a bit, instead of looking at the pile of papers on the table.

He blinks when a plate is put down in front of him, all full of suspicious greens and yellow sweetcorn and the like. Still, he picks up his fork without protest, because it makes Ignis smile a little. Again, another hard-won victory. But Noctis has to remind himself that Ignis is still here, still with him in a sense, and that so long as he doesn’t lose him, everything is as fine as it’s going to be. He’s grateful and thanks whatever angry deity he needs to thank, so long as his advisor isn’t prised from his grasp as others have been, as his father _will_ be in time.

It’s not what Noctis _wants_ , but it is what it is. It’s a rather lonely, painful way to be, but it’s nothing new. He can deal with it.


	3. Part Two

Noct tells himself he can deal with things because he’s always done that. When the things then get worse, he says that he can still deal with it, because, well, shit  _ always _ gets worse, and there’s nothing else he can do about it. He doesn’t see his father hardly at all anymore now, and trying to remember the last time he did only brings up stiff, official functions. The only connection he gets, the only sense of knowing that he still even has a breathing parent, is random touches of shared energy that bite at him out of blue, bursting through crystal’s surface that links them together. Noctis will feel the Wall rippling and flexing around him, with surges of power tingling through his fingertips and taking his breath away. If the suddenness of the connection is horrible, then the hollowness that the instances leave behind is all the more devastating. A single echoing glimpse of pain and exhaustion before Regis’s senses slip from Noctis’s fingers, trailing off in wisps in the distance. 

According to Cor, the King has been better of late. Walking unaided. Attending more events. Looking rather  _ healthy _ , despite it all-

Bullshit. All of it. The brief look Noctis gets into his father’s state of being is more than enough to confirm that. The people of Insomnia look up at the Wall from time to time and smile to themselves, feeling all safe and protected, barely aware of the blood price it demands. Noctis, on the other hand, avoids at all costs to even so much as glance at the stretching parasite that’s killing the King. He won’t look at the various pieces of media that like to hyperfocus on the current monarch either, swiping past all the touched-up pictures of Regis taken and placed at careful angles to reckon to himself what his father really looks like now. Using what he knows through sense to actively conceive him, conjuring up different versions of illness with more grey hair, more lines, more broken veins and purple splotches under destroyed eyes.

Noct jumps at the sight of himself in the school bathroom mirror, splashing water all over his shirt as he wrenches his hands out of the slippery sink. He blinks, seeing a listless looking teenager mottled by the dust that lingers on the glass but in another eye, blues and violets shimmer on. Another rapid spike of sensation, the pins and needles running through his hands as he gasps with aching fatigue that feels desperately familiar but is not his own.

‘ _ Dad.’ _

There’s a sigh in his ears. Hundreds of meters above him, the Wall seems to heave, as if to brace itself. Noctis throws himself into the nexus of power he feels, trying to chase the links all the way to the source. To Regis. 

‘ _ I’m here.’ _

_ ‘I’m here-!’ _

It’s gone. The connection unravelled from Noct’s ribs and fading off into nothing. Instead he’s now hyper-alert to the actual world around him, with the standard gross smell of a school bathroom clogging his face and the hot tap still running over his hands, swelling the skin to a vicious, angry red. 

“Noct- dude, you ok?”

Prompto taps at his arm anxiously and Noctis shakes his head. Snapping out of it and trying to look nonchalant as Prompto stares at him staring at himself. He has to get a grip. He’s gotta remember these dates for the history quiz that’s happening in thirty minutes or he’s done for. And oh yeah, there’s training after school today.  _ Great _ .

Noct’s hands hurt. He hears roaring water and gets confused. He still hasn’t turned the tap off. Shit. He’s tired. He’s so so tired. 


	4. Part Three

Noctis carries on in his own self-deprecating ways. Most times he fails at being a regular teenage kid with school and an apartment and that, and other times he fails at being the Prince of Lucis. Whatever time he has left to spare he spends lying adrift in the realm of failure generally: just being Noct. It’s a totally shit way to be. 

And then there’s having a massively embarrassing crush on his advisor, which is not only just total crap as well, but completely and utterly overwhelming. Growing and consuming more of Noctis with each passing day, twisting and turning every little moment and nuance of life into something discomforting and illicit the second Ignis is even so much as a thought. Given that Ignis is physically around Noct for a decent amount of the hours in the day, that equates to a shit load of suffering- _fucking feelings._ With their stupid, useless, unhelpful rushes of hotness up and down his neck, sweating around his collarbones with a piercing rawness blooming in his throat that makes him feel heavy. He blushes now. He never used to do that. But Ignis ghosts his hands over his, stands too close to Noct without thinking, speaking to his prince in that particular tone of voice and it’s all done. Noct feels the heat rise to his cheeks before he can stop himself, the mortification adding fuel to the flooding blush even more.

Usually his dumb red cheeks are about his only tell, if even it counts as one. Because a shade of red on his standard resting bitch face (honed to perfection after years of practice) just makes him look like he’s even more pissed at something. And that’s the darndest thing, because Noct is beginning to notice that he pretty much is. Arousal and attraction flitter about in his mind and turn his body to jelly. When he faces it directly in desperation, taking himself in his own hand and getting it over it as quickly as possible, Ignis’s face burns agonisingly at the back of his skull, imagination kicking the pleasure as Noctis’s own release overwhelms and bites through every sense. But in the aftermath, when he’s panting and frightened, grateful and ashamed for a locked bathroom door even though he lives alone, he’s not at the helm of the usual listless droning buzz that he knows day in, day out. Rather, there rises an incredible swell of angry energy, lapping against the mess of things that make up his daily life.

Noctis might be crushing hard on Ignis, but of late he’s gotten really mad at him. Because Ignis is right there, stuck to Noctis’s hip more firmly than he ever was, yet Noctis has never been so close to losing him.

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn’t want to angry at him. Out of all the people he could rage and lash out at, Ignis should certainly be the last person on Noctis’s list. It’s not just because of the associative guilt that comes with the fact that Noctis has always been acutely aware of Ignis’s total lack of agency in his lifestyle as Retainer to the Prince. Or that how over the past couple years, it’s thanks to Ignis that the future ruler of Insomnia is still both alive and passably functional as a royal. No, Noct knows he shouldn’t be angry at Ignis because it’s freaking _Ignis._ _Iggy_ : With the thick glasses and soft floofs of hair forever poking into his eyes; clean shirts and spot problems that he fights against with a strict skin care regime; quiet tones but loud ways of thinking. Everything weaving together to become the person Noct can feel comfortable with even when he can’t be comfortable with himself, can heap love and affection on to when he can’t even stand the feel of himself standing in his own skin. Because Ignis is there, in spite of everything, and it’s great-

Or, it was. It was once.

Noctis knows that there were was never any getting away from cold truth that Ignis’s duty is Noctis. It always has been. If one wants to be a touch cruder, then it can be said that Ignis’s _job_ is Noctis. And these days, the crude version is more appropriate. Noctis understands that Iggy now gets a paycheck, and he has a contract which funnily enough, has to be co-signed by Noct of all people (which he always does with a smiley face, since he was five years old and able to write his name). Heck, Noct even knows in detail about the insane security check that Ignis is subjected to, year after year, with the most intrusive in-house interview that has to ensure that the royal retainer to the prince isn’t either plotting to kill the royal family or sell their secrets to the enemy. But it never used to bother Noct. None of it did. He used to think it was hilarious when he was younger. A silly set of little formalities imposed by others that had no bearing on what or who they were.

Now the formalities seem to be all they have. And they’re not little anymore. They’ve banded together to snowball and slam into their relationship with a furious force that is knocking the both of them flat. Noctis was suspicious that Ignis was putting distance between them, now he knows he does it; hiding under the banner of Retainer Ignis all the while. Rather than closing that distance, Noctis, to his horror, seems to just make it worse with all his sour thoughts and even sourer attempts at being a human. And then there’s been the growing issue that is him ‘living’ by himself. Which of course, he completely sucks at.

The apartment was meant to be a test for his father. To prove to his dad that his son was capable of growing up. But more lately it’s strictly become a personal test for Noctis to prove to himself that he doesn’t need Retainer Ignis. Either way, he fails both of them on a near hourly basis. He did his damndest not to in the early days. When living alone was exciting, and the dust had yet to settle with the plates in the cupboards all shiny and brand new, but it wasn’t enough. And now living in his apartment is too hard for him. A certain amount of energy is always needed in order to keep things clean, to remember to do chores, to lock things and shut windows- and Noct _never_ has it. He comes trudging back from school or training and he’s a giant ball of bleating fatigue. A spaced out sludge with nothing in his brain after spending numerous hours attempting to maintain a veneer of pretence for everyone around him, playing the bashful prince. When he’s ‘home’, all he wants to do is curl up into a ball and try and sink through the floors, and sometimes that is all he manages to achieve when old scars from torn up muscle and bone decide to throb and screech in demand for his agony. The memories join forces with his swathing nightmares in the growing evening, breathing in between the physical traumas that line his body.

The constant shitty state of both himself and his living conditions means that Retainer Ignis is always on with full engines running. And Retainer Ignis _thrives_ like this. Lips pursed. Back straight. Marching through the mental and physical muck that lurks around him. Achieving the impossible, turning the rooms from a dumpster’s paradise to a showcase straight out of a Lucian Homes magazine in a matter of hours. Creating elaborate dinners. Delivering in a steady tone the Prince’s ever-changing schedules and tasks garnished with hints and tips and subtle scoldings. Mother of fuck, it’s absolutely unbearable. If not for the shame that Noctis feels at everything Ignis does, or that it just enhances his overpowering sense of failure, then it’s for the fact that it allows Retainer Ignis to keep growing. Keep pushing away everything else that isn’t associated with their assigned roles that reality dictates to the both of them. The anger flickers in Noctis because it seems that Ignis- Iggy- just _accepts_ it. Accepts their pulling apart as one observes an occurrence in the wild. A State Of Things that cannot be subverted.

Noctis hopes that Ignis can’t simply take things as they are. Like he sure as hell doesn’t. He hopes that behind those steely eyes and careful movements, there’s an Ignis whose as frightened of everything as he is. Of Regis dying and Noct having to face ruling a nation that might begin splitting from very centre to the outside, and where they have to finally lose each other, Noct and Iggy, to damn duty and obligation. He has to hope. Otherwise he’ll really lose it. He doesn’t know if Iggy is afraid of the same things he is, because he’s lost that ability to tell what his Iggy is really thinking. But he can wish and hope that one day Retainer Ignis breaks and snaps. That Ignis will stop cleaning up after his Prince and feeding him and covering for him twenty-four seven. Drop the act and lose his rag with Noctis, verbally wreak havoc with him, and bollock him for all the mistakes he keeps making. Noct needs Ignis to show him that there is still an Iggy, who’s real and mad and proves that Noctis isn’t as alone as he might now believe he is.

But Ignis doesn’t get angry. And because Ignis keeps his cool, Noctis manages to keep a lid on his anger too. They seem to roleplay now, day in, day out, with Ignis as the steadfast, put-upon Retainer, and Noctis as the useless Prince. The useless Prince whose uselessness isn’t really that much of an act, more often a purely unintentional entity and always present part of Noctis’s personality- or so he believes. But sometimes now it can pop up as a useful tool to show off his quiet rage, to push back whenever he can at the man he loves most in the world, even as the guilt of it all twists his gut ugly. And still Noctis just can’t fucking understand why Ignis doesn’t do what any other normal person would and just leave him to wallow permanently in his own self-orchestrated disasters.

“Oh, _gods._ ”

It’s a standard school night. Noctis barely lifts his head up from his comic, trying to concentrate on the story in front of him, but another sound of disgust from Ignis has him wondering just what it is now that he’s done to horrify his wonderful Retainer so. Turns out it’s a rather elaborate colony of aggressive mould that has overtaken an old mug of hot chocolate Noctis left on the windowsill in his room about six weeks ago, maybe, and forgot to drink. The smell of rotted, curdled milk and rancid chocolate hits him as Ignis enters the kitchen, and Noctis can’t blame the latter for holding the stench bomb as far away from his own nose as his arms will allow. He chucks the entire demonic entity, mug and all, into the kitchen bin. Slamming the lid shut with all the force as if he was actually throwing something out of the bestiary into the dark netherworlds beyond.

Noctis catches Ignis’s glance at him and feels a slight shade of awkwardness. The apartment is particularly bad today. Like, way beyond its usual soft tribute to the Lucian tips outside the border. Noct hasn’t been able to face food recently, and it shows in abandoned packets and half-eaten tins, all fighting to make their way to the top of the grimy surface of kitchen counters and side tables. Noct had meant to try and clean up a little bit before Ignis came over, but he just kinda sunk into his sofa and forgot. Again. Noctis would say this, but he has long thought that trying to tell Ignis about these kinds of things was nothing short of pure stupidity and infantile and so he never does it. He sees from where he sits on the sofa the wrinkle of disappointment creasing Ignis’s nose as they continue to appraise each other, like the Prince is another mug of old hot chocolate that he’d like to chuck in the trash. 

“Whatever am I going to do with you, Noctis?”

Ignis doesn’t sound irritated. Just as apathetic as fucking usual. Noctis looks back at the page, flipping it just a little too hard and tearing the bottom a little, the tiny flutter of sound all loud and detestable to him.

“How ‘bout you throw me off the balcony and tell everyone I jumped. No one would question it.”

“ _Noct-”_

Noct looks back up at him, slightly stunned. He hasn’t heard Ignis speak with that much expression in a while, and especially not at him. He can sense the need to rise back up at Ignis in himself and snap right back. Pour out a torrent of frantic feelings that have festered on and on for weeks and months. To be the one to drop the facade and let it all out in the gruesome open. 

Instead, he doesn’t. Instead he tries to be helpful for a bit, because he’s too scared to do anything else. Rather than let his rage shoot up and burst into a thousand pieces, he tumbles up to his feet and does a fake-lazy shuffle to the fridge, passing by and ignoring the stern look on Ignis’s face.

“You want an omelette for dinner, Iggy?”

Ignis relents with a dry sigh, “If you’d be so kind.”

They clean and cook in a stiff silence. They say nothing and do everything, inches apart but lingering in different worlds. Noctis can’t even really ask Ignis about his day today either, because he knows that today involved the weekly observations meeting and that means having to hear about his father. It’s enough to deal with the fact that as Retainer, Ignis gets to see Regis more than he does. Not to mention that often trying to talk to Ignis often gets but a few, sparse sentences in return. As it is, Iggy barely says a fucking thing these days that isn’t to do with Noct’s royal life, and it’s days like this that make Noctis worryingly wonder if Ignis has ever actually enjoyed being with him at all. Ignis powers through his twenty-four hours a day job that he cannot really get out of unless he actually does throw the Prince of Lucis off a balcony. Who knows, soon enough he might be able to bet on Noct being kind enough to do it for him.

 

* * *

 

 

Thankfully, it’s not always like this. So drastic. So stupidly tragic. Sometimes, everything returns to a form of blessed normal; a bounce of sunlight peeking through all the muck. Noctis gets lucky enough at particular times to have an Ignis who is more like the Iggy he shared a childhood with, who waits for him after school with a plateful of pastries and a kind look on his face, excited to gauge his reaction. It’s an Ignis that _talks_ too. Properly. Saying as he thinks without an inch of filter or reserve and there’s none of that retentive bullshit that Noctis is so sick of. Every time this Ignis resurfaces, even for half a breath, Noctis can feel himself staring at him so hard, it’s like he’s trying to physically imprint the outline of him onto his skull. Committing every word and detail and little quirk of his advisor’s lips to memory. Storing all the recollections which make it enough to keep the Prince from losing the will to live completely, or keep him going at least.

They serve more than just a moralising purpose however. Twisting over to fantasy late at night when Noctis just aches from head to toe. Aches for sleep and oblivion and also for some release and relief from it all. The touch of his own hand turns to the fantastical other, and whispers of a soft yet demanding voice dig down his throat. The shadows and dips along the bedroom wall morph into a slender, tall figure that takes Noctis firmly, and there’s that same little turn of the mouth as glasses flash in the dim light.

Noctis knows he should regret doing this. Regret using Ignis in such a way that the man is completely unaware of. And he does. Long after he’s roughly scrubbed himself down and crawled back into bed, legs tingling, shoving the covers tight over his head and imprisoning himself for his pathetic sins. But in the spark of the climax all the mantras that stick in his head and tell him it’s his fault that everything is so bad in his life chase off into nothing. If it’s Ignis’s name he whispers with a hot sigh of satisfaction in exhausting seconds of spentness afterwards, then Noctis pretends that he didn’t hear it.

 

* * *

 

 

Noct reckons he’s pretty good at hiding his fantasies when he’s face to face with the real, breathing subject of them. He’s able to hide lot’s of other stuff from Ignis usually, and when Ignis is being particularly Retainer-y then it’s no trouble at all to keep a blank look plastered tightly on. But then Ignis will do something different. Something fresh, tantalising, and it will send Noctis’s already touchy mind in an absolute spin, a burning shudder to his system. Ignis has always been elegant and supple, but Noctis begins to wonder if he’s now diligent of it, because he seems to just move and walk in such a way that enhances it to the utmost. He’s pretty sure that Ignis has started to… he doesn’t know the word for it but it’s like he does this _peering_ thing from under his eyelashes which somehow looks furtive but also weirdly flirty at the same time. And then finally there’s the way that Noct’s caught him talking to others. Direct and open, with clarity and poise but also with so much command-

It’s attractive to observe to the point of ridiculousness. Not to mention that if Noct’s happens to be in too close a proximity to it, he nare has a clue on what to do about it. So far he’s been lucky that this dash of Ignis has only shown himself at public functions: dinners and formals and whatnot, so that Noctis can observe and get all warm and uncomfortable from afar as he makes the attempt to squash down the plethora of gross and embarrassing scenarios that dash through his unwise, overly hormonal brain. The Six forbid if he so happens to catch eyes with the man at the centre of all this suffering from across a ballroom floor or at a head table. A soft, searching look from Ignis as he checks for his Prince amongst a sea of anonymous faces is the most powerful and destructive thing of all for Noct, sending blood rushing to cheeks and spiking burning wants that refuse to be culled and his hips shift slightly without his control.

Noct yearns for it and yet also tries to repel it at all costs, succeeding in doing the latter a lot more often as their relationship continues to brittle and weaken. Yet he has moments that force him to understand just how badly a handle he has on everything that revolves around Ignis. The anger, the enticement, the distance and confusion and swelling hurt that lingers all around them and in-between, making everything all so putrid. And obviously, because this is him, Noctis, he hasn’t a damn clue on what to do about it.

 

* * *

 

 

He feels like a wicked old granny as he sits on a large cushion, propped up against the wall and close to the equipment box. His bones are too sore and sensitive to handle a chair, and whilst the air in the old training hall in the East wing of the citadel is warm from the sunshine that pours through the large bay windows, Noctis is huddled up in a thick blanket with a fresh water bottle wedged between his knees. He attempts to lessen his wild shivering, focusing as hard as he can on not feeling the rhythmic pinches of pain that flicker underneath his skin, grasping on to old troubles that lie in his back, all too eager to have some excuse to join in with the torture party.

 _Stasis_ : what a bitch.

Noct’s had short bursts of it before, but this is the first time it’s gone and truly knocked him on his ass. Intense sessions of warp tactics have now become a daily part of his training routine, of which the technicalities and skills of the matter he can handle just fine, but right now his body is refusing to adjust to the strain of the excess magic that bubbles up in his blood after, the feeling of which is akin to having weights strapped around his lungs. To his own humiliation, after days of trying to push through the effects of knocking and constant tremors after a few warps, Noctis collapsed all in one go yesterday mid-bout with Gladio in a blinding arc of agony and numbness. Flopping to the floor like a fish pinned to the deck with his mouth clamped shut as flickers of blue and grey sparked off him like faulty wirings.

He doesn’t remember much of the actual collapse. Just Gladio trying to cling to him as he pressed numerous buttons and demanded down the phone. He recalls an emergency consultation with the head doctor at the Citadel Infirmary, General Duratos, and one of the Glaive’s most proficient warp benders (Nyx? Noctis thinks it was Nyx he could see from his position of being sprawled out on the floor). They had managed to assure both the Prince and his then near-full-on-panicked sparring partner right there and then that extensive stasis was both common and occurred repeatedly for those beginning to use warp more regularly, and that in Noctis’s case, it was simply a matter of rest and a hold on the training. Jokes about ‘first timers’ were swapped at young Noct’s expense in an attempt to lighten the mood, but even Noct could tell as he lay there half out of his mind that the ‘gentle advice’ given to Gladio by the doctor in particular in regards to his schedule for him was nothing short of a serious telling off. In retrospect, it seemed as if Duratos wasn’t all that kind about it either. Had he been a little more lucid at the time, Noct would have intervened. If not because Gladio didn’t need to be told something so obvious in regards to his training, then because gods, it wasn’t _Gladio’s_ damn fault that his body was so messed up and couldn’t handle a bit more than its usual bout of quirky magic. But between being ferried up off the floor and ushered home by Monica, he hadn’t even been able to give the poor man who looked completely mortified a reassuring smile or a word of comfort.

Noctis was determined to come into the Citadel today because of that. To make sure that his future Shield wasn’t so riddled with guilt, after his constant texts to Noct throughout the night asking for updates on his welfare doubly confirmed it. It took some persuading with Ignis to drive him, after clearing it up with him that no, he wasn’t going to classes (and could he please stop fussing) and he wouldn’t physically exert himself beyond what was absolutely necessary. They had managed to find Gladio back in the training hall with his father, the Marshall, and a few very young Glaive hopefuls, and Noctis was all but ready to show him that yeah, his Prince might be the hobbling embodiment of sloppy jello trying to set in a fridge, but he was fine _._ And honestly, the scorching ache and throbs that lined his spine had been worth it just to see Gladio’s glum face twist up into a grin as he gently squeezed his shoulder in a silent thanks before demanding that he go and sit his stubborn ass down.

It had made Noctis feel good, maybe even better than that, given the state he was in. It wasn’t often that he was able to do something for Gladio. Even though he could barely think straight for the pain and seemed now marooned on the floor, dragging his pathetic hide to make Gladio’s day had been worth it.

Until, of course, the man at his side decided to open his mouth.

Constant banter is a natural state of affairs between Gladio and Ignis, or at least it is whenever they have Noctis around them. It’s good-natured, of course, but it’s not without its tiny wellsprings of competition and envy, gnawed into them when they were children and first introduced to the fact that yes, their Noct was to share. Noctis knows that since then they’ve transitioned well from two people with a royal in common to good friends over the years, (that or Gladio is stuck for people to text at all hours of the day beside him) but it still marvels him how quick they are to pick at each other. Usually, he enjoys it too, because if they’re picking on each other, it means there’s no room to pick on him _._

Yet today is different, because everything is different thanks to his thoughtless nervous system. Gladio is decidedly more vulnerable in the ribbings given to him by his equal, and because Ignis senses it, and because Ignis is always so easily ready and able to help, poking fun turns into a friendly challenge. An offer to let loose some restraint. Noctis barely manages to clear his head in order to follow just what is being said as he sees Ignis back from skipping off to the changing room, dressed in the standard Glaive training gear whilst Gladio stands in the ring.

Oh right, they’re going to spar.

Wait-

“So,” Clarus booms, suddenly standing beside Noctis and scaring the crap out of him as he pulls out a stopwatch, “a quick warm-up bout- three minutes boys, yes?”

Cor stands with the Glaives-in-training on the opposite side of the ring, his forehead knitted with a faint sense of disapproval, although he’s not the one to deny a bit of fun. He lifts his head and nods at the box by Noct.

“Training equipment only. I’m in no mood to revive anyone today.”

There’s a wave of giggles in the hall, quickly hushed with a withering glare from their Marshall. Gladio scoffs at the suggestion, but duly goes to collect the wooden replica weapons, winking at Noct as he collects the carefully crafted items which are of course specified to represent the actual weight and manoeuvrability of the real things. Gladio opts for their favourite arms for the both of them; indicative of how bad his mood really is. He uses one hand to pass both of Ignis’s daggers to him and gets a well-earned glower for it as he takes position against his fellow opponent.

As Ignis and Gladio show their stances to indicate they’re ready, the hall falls silent. There’s only the buzz of the lights overhead filling up the room; giving a voice to the anticipation everyone feels. For Noct, his anxiousness is far louder, licking his insides, and his instincts tell him that it’s purely reserved for Ignis’s sake because Gladio doesn’t have the role as future leader of the Kingsglaive due to just right of heritage. Noctis knows from the ghosts of bruises that line his skin, the shouts of reassurance that leave his ears ringing after every session he has with him- Gladio fights and scraps and earns that title with every moment he has to spare, and it shows even in his anticipating stance. The greatsword is held with knuckles steady and fixed, every muscle tensed and ready to spring. He regards Ignis not as he is, but as a target. An objective to be taken down with every inch of strength he has to give. 

Noctis sucks in a sharp breath as Clarus clicks the mechanical stopwatch. “Begin!”

Noct barely has time to see that Ignis shifts his pose ever so slightly in order to put more weight on his front foot, before Gladio opts to take the first strike. Noct knows that it’s typical of the man to act quickly when he knows what he’s fighting. Or at least when he thinks he does. As he launches forward, so unpredictably does Ignis, only his is a light and graceful step, barely denting the padded mat beneath his feet. Gladio is thrown off balance by the feint, swerving to the side but still caught in the momentum of passing by his target, his weapon adding to his instability. In that time, Ignis has pivoted, daggers flipped and his wrists tight and straight, going to strike.

The clack of wood on wood is oddly echoing to the ears, whereas the grunt of discomfort Gladio makes from having to twist awkwardly to meet Ignis’s attack is loud and dull. More than likely a swift swear word is followed under his breath. Noct hears Clarus whistle low, but he knows not to look up at the General. Someone else mumbles something, shocked, as is everyone else in the room. But that all happens in half second and there’s another half to register it all before both partners spring back and the real fight begins.

The scuffle runs on for the full three minutes with neither made to yield, and it’s a hell of a thing to watch, but that’s mostly because of Ignis. It’s not the surprise of seeing him fight, although it’s been several months since Noctis has last been lucky enough to see him work with a weapon, fake or not, but rather the surprise is in how he fights. It’s not an equal match. Gladio is still the superior opponent in all respects, as Noctis had apprehensively expected him to be, but he’s not as excessively so where he has been before. To the well-honed eye one can see that his stamina and finesse outmatch Ignis’s, and if the man had the advantage of more time, he would eventually gain the upper hand from his opponent and run him down to a pulp. But Gladio doesn’t have the advantage of time, of which Ignis full well knows. There’s something else that Ignis knows and utilises, and that is the fact that Gladio is still distraught from yesterday.

As they grapple and clash, Noctis feels as if blinking is a risk of missing something as the pair move in smooth, fluid movements. Or more accurately put, it is Ignis who taunts and dallies around Gladio, a predator teasing a chase. Gladio, intimidated by the unexpected nature of this and riding on it without thinking, responds with unnecessary force, openly showing his annoyance but allowing for angry mistakes. The seconds tick on as Ignis continues to exploit this quickly formed flaw of Gladio’s to the hilt, pull off flashy kicks and twirls, daggers switching from hand to hand and flicking through his fingers as if they joined to him by invisible strings. It all adds to the sense of pursuit; to the _performance_ of Ignis’s response-

Ignis has brought his mind as a weapon, and it’s a useful, workable defence; the elegance and sublime elements of his moves bringing a distracting essence of showmanship to a foe whose mind isn’t fully switched to deal with these new set of problems and for Noct that’s-

-that’s one of the _sexiest_ things he’s ever seen.

Noctis didn’t think to prepare for this. He tenses up without thinking, extra sharp spirals of discomfort kicking at him for doing so, and he forces himself to try and unclench the tension knotting at the bottom of his stomach. At least no one else is observing what must be a strenuous look on his face, with everyone fully absorbed in the match as some of the younger trainees even clap and whoop along. It says a lot that neither Clarus nor Cor hush the students, so often they attempt to discourage such behaviour out of wishing to foster a healthy respect for the fighting acts of retaining and taking life, but they too are utterly preoccupied with the scene in front of them. It’s not every day that the anticipated top two fighters of the future King’s retinue pit themselves against each other for the fun of it.

Noctis doesn’t add his voice to the small crowd of appreciation, although it’s a fight to keep his mouth from hanging open. He’s rooted to stillness with absolute awe and another feeling that’s very different- because he’s watching Ignis, his gawky nerd, his straight-laced and to the point advisor, twisting and baiting his opponent whilst occasionally lulling in a strike with deadly force with a sly smile and a tongue licking the bottom of his full lips. It’s all so new, so different from what Noctis knows about him. His eyes, usually averting and downcast, focusing intently on his opponent and they shine overly-bright with excitement and adrenaline. He continues to keep up the defence against Gladio, even as his facade starts to drop through exhaustion and inexperience. Towards the end of the final minute Gladio lands some near devastating hits that has him gasping with exertion, and Noctis finds himself transfixed with how his chest heaves up and down. He’s bashed to take a knee but rolls out of Gladio’s attempted final strike, adjusting his hold on his daggers, eyes surveying the situation, swivelling to suddenly catch Noctis’s stare. 

He’s off balance and his attention has budged. Gladio’s sees it. He makes his move and it’s before Ignis has time to reorganise, and the meeting blow is weak, near knocking the daggers from his hands. Ignis has to evade a second strike in order to attempt to reposition, and Noctis feels his back straining to lean forward, like he could somehow jump in there and join in. A kick of soreness bundles up, as if in response. Oh yeah, sure-

“ _Time!_ ”

As they’ve been taught, Ignis and Gladio instantaneously drop their weapons to the floor and step back with hands raised, and so ends one of the quickest and longest three minutes of Noctis’s life. There’s a short round of applause, babbles of chatter, and the trainee Glaives rush towards Gladio before he has time to draw breath, eager to snatch the first word from their teacher and discuss what they’ve just seen. Noctis looks up at General Amicitia, seeing the man chuckling to himself as he tucks away the stopwatch. He’s about to ask him for his observations of the fight, desperate as he is now for distraction. However, he doesn’t get the chance. Clarus reaches into a bag to pull out a towel, waving over at the crowd.

“Ignis!”

All thought of asking Clarus for his opinion is utterly lost as a sweating form approaches them, still breathing hard with cheeks flaming red. He catches the towel thrown at him and rubs it against his neck. Noct feels like there’s a pressure at his own throat, boiling heavy and sending tingles down his spine as he catches the bulges of muscles and patches of flushed skin. He scrabbles to get to his feet, shoving his blanket aside and letting the water bottle fall to the floor. Fuck, fuck, fuck-

“That was excellent, Ignis.” Clarus sounds as proud as a father as he pats Ignis’s shoulder. “Truly. I’ll have to let the King know of the huge progress you’ve made.” 

Ignis smiles, and Noctis can’t stop looking at the sweat trap at the hollow of Iggy’s throat, where the muggy sunlight sinks into his skin. Ignis dips his head.

“Thank you, Sir. It is because of your help I have made such improvements.”

Noctis manages to tear his eyes away from feeding his own sin-fest in order to actually look at Ignis in the face. He sounds hoarse and looks the equivalent of it too, yet he appears lighter almost. Uplifted. His eyes still bright with that smile still on his face. He looks _happy._ Not something Noct’s seen him as for months and months. It’s almost alien on him, but then it looks so perfect on him too, and Noct feels his own lips twitching to grin in return out of relief.

Clarus nods at his pupil, and then looks at the gaggle of kids that still surround their hero Gladio, asking a million questions per head, “I’d best go and rescue my son before he’s eaten alive, excuse me.”

He leaves them to pull Gladio out the fray, and as soon as he’s out of earshot Ignis rounds on Noctis, eyes narrowed. 

“Are you alright? How is the pain?”

Noctis can’t stop looking at him and at the same time really needs to just keep looking at him. He feels like he’s melting, his heart thumping hard which isn’t all that great for the state that he’s in. But even though it’s taking all his energy to stand, he wants to go run a mile. Skip about. Take the giddy feelings he has and go rupture into fragments.

He hasn’t answered Iggy’s question. He’s just staring at him. Noctis panics at this, so he says the first thing he thinks of.

“You know that was really fucking cool, what you did there?”

Oh wow. He’s an idiot. It doesn’t keep the smile on Ignis’s face. He simply shrugs, pulling the towel off his neck.

“I realised I’ve been neglecting my training of late. It will do me no good if I cannot be prepared in all aspects of serving the Crown.” 

The reply sits in Noctis’s heart like a damn sting. Numbing and incredulous. But then anger flares in him, quick and scorching, and he scowls. Of course he doesn’t get to share in the brief spark of happiness he saw on Ignis’s face. That Ignis immediately reverts back to that most hated form of Retainer the second Noctis opens his stupid mouth. Nothing but officiality will do.

“Right.” He knows his tone far too harsh for what seems like a normal conversation, but Noctis doesn’t care. “Gotta be on form for the _job._ ”

Ignis flinches at the snapping retort, confusion filling his face. It seems as if Noctis has left him speechless for once, as Ignis opens his mouth but nothing is said. Noct refuses to buckle at the bewildered look. Letting it bounce off him as he grits his teeth. The pain is getting worse. He should sit down again. That or he’s going to fall.

“Hey!”

Gladio appears at Ignis’s shoulder, face full of thunder. He turns Ignis to face him clasping his hand, the angry look just a ruse as it suddenly turns into a wide grin.

“Well.” He mocks at slapping Ignis’s face back and forth. “You little shit, Ignis. You forgot to say how you’ve improved a hell of a lot since last time.”

Noctis snorts, the tension sinking out of him. He silently blesses Gladio for his timely presence. Ignis’s puzzlement deepens before he catches on to the sarcasm of his fellow comrade, shaking his head.

“Goodness, Gladio, a compliment from you in the hall at last- it’s taken only what, five years?”

“Five years of me throwing your skinny ass around a ring.” He lets go of Ignis’s hand, “Seriously, you changed it up?”

“Your father helped me tweak a few of my routines.” Ignis confesses, a hint of playfulness in his tone, “I did also take up those fencing lessons with Master Gwyll, despite your protests. 

That has Noctis startled. Ignis had taken that up? Gladio scoffs loudly enough that it causes a group of Glaives nearby to stare at him. “Oh sure. So that’s why it felt more like a cheap ballet more than a real fight.”

Ignis smirks, “Trouble following the rhythm?”

“Dancing around your ‘partner’ won’t do you any good when it’s a demon the size of a house.”

“And yet I had no trouble dancing around _you_ -”

Gladio acts as if he’s trying to kick to the back of Ignis’s legs to shut him up, laughing when the latter clumsily tries to detach himself from the foolery. Despite his internal ire, Noctis has to laugh at how Ignis almost falls over himself the attempt, drawing Gladio’s attention and subsequent snarking fire.

“At least his highness looks entertained.” Gladio turns on Noctis, hands on hips. “You done gawking now, princess?”

“What’s wrong, Gladio?” Noctis fires back, long used to learning to be quick with his tongue as well as his fists whenever it came to verbally challenging Gladio in his natural habitat of the Citadel training wing, “Not used to draws?”

“Oh draw my _ass._ If I had ten seconds more-”

The training bell dings, and the three of them quit their sarcasm chorus to watch as the trainee Glaives pair off in twos and threes and place themselves around the hall, Cor and Clarus giving their directions to practice particular drills in turn. Cor taps the bell again, and synchronously everyone begins to run through several rounds of different exercises, arms and legs pumping and waving amongst ripples of encouraging shouts and calls.

“Looks like I’m needed.” Gladio catches his father’s look and nods back him, stretching his neck in preparation. He taps Ignis on the arm. “Why don’t you stay? Come and teach these kids a thing or two eh? Noct can observe if he’s not in too much pain. He might even learn something too.”

It’s a nervous offer, given under the surface of casualness, and Noctis knows Gladio makes it because he still feels bad about yesterday. He feels a flutter of genuine regard for his Shield at that moment. Even though he’s not sure if he can handle hanging around, because now his knees are starting to shake violently in protestation and the constant discomfort is starting to make his chest strain. But he knows he wants to stay, so he’s going to try and do just that. Besides, getting to see Ignis in more action, who couldn’t refuse such an invite? He begins to nod.

“Yeah, sounds-”

“-Noct should go home. I’m afraid we can’t.”

Gladio shrugs at Ignis’s interjection, unaware that Noctis feels like he’s just been slapped.

“Fair enough. You’ll both call me later, yeah?” 

Noctis doesn’t have it in him to so much as silently acknowledge the request. Gladio is bouncing back off into the training ring, immediately jumping in to correct a stance and offer a friendly word of instruction here and there. Noctis’s legs continue to shake, and he puts a hand against the wall to keep his balance, fingers curling into fists. Ignis stretches, folding the towel and kneeling to a bag nearby to search for a potion to take the edge off of his developing bruises. He talks to Noctis over his shoulder, oblivious as hell. 

“Allow me to warm down and get changed. I’ll take you back so you can rest. I have a seminar at four but I’ll be back in time for dinner, but in the meantime don’t exert yourself-”

“Y’know what, Iggy? You should stay.”

Noctis’s voice is sharp. So much so that Ignis turns to look up at him, a small potion vial in his hand. He blinks, the creeping bafflement coming back to his features.

“What?”

“Yeah.” Noctis chokes out, working with every inch of him to keep his voice even. “No, you should stay. I’ll go.”

“But-”

“But what? Have fun. I’ll get Dustin to take me home, so don’t worry, I won’t _exert_ myself.”

“Noctis-” 

Nope. He won’t let Ignis speak for another moment. Noct turns and leaves him where he is, stumbling off and out of the training hall. If Ignis gets to his feet to follow him, Noctis doesn’t hear it for the pounding of his heart in his ears, echoing the sheer agony that is now pulling his hips and shattering his nerves to pieces. As it is, there’s no Ignis tailing him by the time he staggers into Dustin’s office and requests to be taken home.

* * *

 

 

A liability: that’s what he is. A total liability. That should have been his name when he was born, not something so elegant as Noctis. Liability Lucis Caelum. He huffs. Yep. That’s much better.

He has to hold on to every inch of wall and railing that is available on the way to his apartment, sweating and swearing and biting his lip so he doesn’t scream for the pain of it all. His legs are almost numb, and the stasis has riled itself back up enough to start crackling energy at his fingertips, although he knows that his anger is feeding the affliction. He had attempted to go through the mindfulness lessons he was taught several years ago when he was first instructed in magic whilst lying in the back of Dustin’s car. Only the attempt was as useless as it was when he first got taught the method. Blank your mind. Centre your body. Empty yourself. What a joke.

Noctis allows the foul temper to fill his blood and he pays for it. He doesn’t care. Just like how he doesn’t care about the fact that he should have worn his braces today. It might be that he won’t be able to walk for days now and tomorrow is going to hurt so bad he’ll wish he’d never been born, but right now he just doesn’t give a flying shit. He just wants it all to go away. The pain, the anger, the fear-

He chucks his keys to the floor once he crosses the threshold into his apartment, feebly kicking his shoes off and at all the shit that’s lies across the desperate path to his bed. Given that this is his place, there’s lots of it everywhere. Books, clothes, boxes, cartons-

“Oh for fuck’s sake!”

After what feels like an age and plenty of crying out, Noct falls into bed fully clothed, gingerly moving as little as he can whilst he tries to get the covers over him, groaning with the effort. The shivering has decided to come back, and he can’t get warm enough. He weakly burrows into his sheets, pulling the duvet right over his head and tucking it around him as tightly as he can, the spasms in his legs making it almost impossible.

Noctis squeezes his eyes shut, tears leaking out at last after watering like mad from the strain of getting from Dustin’s car to the hallowed haven of his miserable bed. He feels like a ravaged piece of meat, stasis attacking and raking at him in between every breath. But that’s not what he thinks about-

Since when did Iggy fucking _fence?_

There are a hundred things Noctis wants to rant and rave about in his mind after today, but prominently, that’s one of the things that just keeps coming back to him in spades. Ignis has been taking up fencing. Ignis never said shit to him about taking up fencing, Noct’s sure of it. It’s never come up in conversation. It’s been months since they even had just a normal one of those things that didn’t come loaded with rebukes or talk of duties or chores. Ignis has never so much as smiled properly in all that time either, and it’s taken for Noct to see him today in order to realise that, and what a fucking terrible thing that is as well.

There’s something painful digging into his hip. Noctis wrenches his jacket off, and his phone slips from the pocket and scatters heavy to the floor, screen alight. He leans over the side of the bed, face still buried into his pillow. His fingertips drift over the cover of Lunafreya’s notebook, Prompto’s sketchbook he leant him, other knickknacks and various messes before it finds it, poking an eye out from the darkness he’s trying to swallow himself in to see the text message Gladio sent him an hour ago.

 

**[Gladio]: You + Iggy had a fight? U didnt tell me.            14:07**

 

Possibly Noctis could talk to Gladio about all of this. Not the stupid, crappy, intimate details of his problem, but maybe some of the stuff that Ignis has been doing which just has been tearing Noctis apart. He dismisses the idea out of hand almost immediately as he begins to try and frame what he would say. Already to himself, he sounds like a whinging brat. A Gladio hearing it out loud wouldn’t take the issues much better, and maybe that’s because he really is just a whinging brat. On the surface of it, there isn’t a problem with Ignis at all. The problem is Noctis. The problem is _always_ Noctis. Him. The one failing to keep his life together. He might want Ignis to treat him like a damn person but he’s not really doing all that well of behaving like one. The big concern at the moment isn’t the fact that they aren’t friends anymore.

Even though that fact about them not being friends anymore hurts him. A lot. So much that Noctis can barely think about it, so he doesn’t. He stays in bed as the afternoon turns to evening and begs silently to his body to take the pain away. He drifts between quick empty sleeps and blazing wakefulness, rolling and turning as the hurts retreat and fill him in waves. He watches some dumb shit on his phone. He trawls some message boards for Kings Knight codes. He sleeps again. And then he just lies there. Merely existing. Staring at the ceiling so he doesn’t even have to look at the shithole his bedroom is. The sun tracks through his window, pulling in the darkness, although Noct doesn’t move to turn on the light or close the curtains. He lets the evening envelop him. Seeing the shades of cream above him turn to violets and blues.

He hears the front door open as he rouses from another uncomfortable doze. By the time Ignis has entered his bedroom, the covers are firmly back over his head, eyes shut, breathing measured and slow. All a careful landscape of an attempt to feign sleep because he cannot face his Retainer right now.

“Noct?”

His breath catches, but he refuses to move. He hears Ignis tread quietly into the room, approaching his bed. There’s a clearing of a throat.

“Noctis?”

Noct is tempted. He’s so tempted to give it up. Pull the covers back. Ask him if Iggy did what he told him and stayed to train. If he had fun. If he stayed there so long because he didn’t want to come back and serve his miserable Prince. But he doesn’t. Because he’s a coward and he’s tired. The cautious hand touching his arm through the duvet lifts. He hears the curtains being drawn and his bedside lamp being turned on. Ignis closes the door behind him as he leaves, but then Noct hears him pottering about the kitchen: cooking and cleaning again. Damn him. 

He stays agonisingly awake the whole time Ignis is in his apartment, but refuses to emerge from under his covers, hands clutching at the sheets. He’s enticed again and again to shout out to Ignis, more so as the Stasis decides to flare up right at that moment, but he can’t. He physically and mentally can’t. When Ignis comes back into the bedroom an hour later, he assumes the same fake snoozing, listening intently as things are placed on his nightstand. The footsteps turn and leave again. All the way out the front door. Ignis is gone.  

Noctis peeps out from under the covers and sees a green bag and a large bottle of water next to his lamp. He makes a grab for the bag, finding a large box and some papers inside. It’s a prescription for emergency pain relief with a dosage schedule and a separate doctor’s note, with the first taking highlighted out for him. Two pills before bed. Well shit, no need to tell him twice. He reads the doctor’s note as he’s chugging down the rest of the water, soothing a thirsty throat he forgot he had. It’s just the standard medical stuff about pain management that he’s read hundreds of times before, with an underlined appointment set for tomorrow morning. Then there’s a small sticky note from Ignis.

_Call Me._

 

Noctis swallows. It’s like Ignis has whispered it to him. The cramped handwriting saying enough about the plea behind it. There’s nothing else. No directives about medication or eating or anything else. Just a simple yet desperate-sounding _Call Me._ Noct’s hand goes under his pillow to reach his mobile without even thinking about it, until he does. 

Call him. But what for? Call him call him call him-

But what are they going to talk about? Whether or not Noct’s taken his medication. If he’s aware he has an appointment tomorrow. His schedule for that day. How much pain is he in. That’s what they’re going to talk about. It will be nothing about what happened in the training room. Or what happened when Ignis came to see him. Or about what’s been going on over the past couple of days and weeks and months that have made Noctis feel as if his ribcage is trying to crush him from the inside. They’ll talk of everything that is important and of nothing important at all. 

He blinks slowly. He’s hoping that his meds work quick, because now all he wants to do is sleep. Black it all out and forget it and try again tomorrow. He looks back down at the phone in his hand, and then drops it back on to the floor, flopping back into his duvet and shutting the world out. No. Noctis won’t call Ignis tonight. He can’t.


	5. Part Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My internet is being an absolute sod while I try and post this chapter and my formatting keeps messing up so if there are any issues in reading, please please please let me know x

It gets worse. Of course it does. Ignis pushes, so Noctis pushes back. It’s a brattish, assholish thing to do, and Noctis knows it, but the world is spiralling on and on and it goes so fast Noctis feels permanently sick and washed-out. Swallowing hard and trying to breathe just so he can put one foot in front of the other. It’s so puerile, so dubious and un-princely, but it’s whatever it is he can do to forget the crap that surrounds him. To forget the truth.

Because yes, he knows the truth. He _hears_ it. He can’t help but not hear it every time the Wall shivers and there’s a rasping flutter of breath in his ear. He hears the fucking reality and the _truth_ of it all every time his father slips from the strain of upholding his duty. When he hears his heart skip and feels bones become so weary as the King continues to pour his entire being into the Wall; literally and figuratively and everything in between. Noctis’s father is dying, and sooner rather than later Noctis is going to be a King, and Noctis knows it and feels it and sees it and hears and gods be fucked- he _cannot_ take it any longer.

The truth fucking sucks. Is it too much to ask that the man who used to be the one who’d let him forget it now stop reminding him in between every second and stop and stubborn silence? To stop being so exhausting, to stop twisting the hand he used to hold so tenderly, and turn the world all around the Prince, to force him to face the future?

(Yes. Yes it is too much to ask. And that is precisely why Noctis doesn’t do it.)

 

* * *

 

 

It was the cane that did it. The sight of it, blown up wide and there for all of Insomnia to see on the news screen, including the Prince who was walking back from an exam he hoped he hadn’t just bombed, wondering if he should revise tonight as well or just give up after four and write to Luna instead. Y’know, semi-normal stuff- and then boom. The truth was there and blaring cloyingly into his face, punching him directly in the gut. His father had a cane again. This time it was going to stay, judging on the way he was leaning so heavily upon it. The bubbling, incensed, frightened quiet Noctis had been holding on to with barely a fraction of strength within him had plummeted, splintering on impact.

He stayed at the arcade until it closed. Pummeling enough pixelated bad things so that he could be calm enough for himself to go home. He was trying to _adult_. Trying to figure out how to deal with himself again. That was suitable for a future King, yes? And maybe he had almost nailed it and had let go of the shock of seeing his dad so viscerally ill, managed to at least squash back down into the depths of his hellish mind so that he could think about study and Luna. But then he heard the tick of the coffee pot as he put his keys in the door, and he felt like liquid fire had been poured over his head melding his fingers to the scraping metal.

It’s a wonder he didn’t burst apart right there. It wasn’t a scheduled night for Ignis. Even if it was, Noct knew it was past seven. Ignis had no reason to be there. That in itself was enough to shove the wrath and fear back to the rupturing surface of his mind, sucking behind what he hoped was another blank look. Because if Ignis was there, that meant he was going to get yet another round of scoldings. Probably about the state of the flat again-

Oh. He’s wrong. He’s really, really wrong.

 

* * *

 

Noctis doesn’t yell when he’s scared. He remembers that he barely whimpered as the Marilith tore him asunder, and nor did he scream when he saw Sylva and Philo severed like plucked flowers. For all the fury that rumbles in his head, he’s never found himself needing to shout to the heavens about the prospects of his future, nor let rip on his father or any of those who are responsible for it, even though it frightens him so much. There’s not been so much as a whisper of rage from his lips, not even when he’s glazed over raw with pain and can barely move, where he’s just a blank gaze at a wall and thin film over racing thoughts of just how is this his damn life.

No, he’s never raised his voice. Never shouted. But then that changes.

_“I don’t want to hear your ‘truth’!”_

 

* * *

 

He shouted at Ignis. He got mad at him. Erupted at him. Because Noctis is absolutely fucking petrified, and tired, and his father’s figure with that bastard cane splashed across the news-screen in all of his suffocating inglory had barely discoloured from his mind when Ignis thought it prudent to drag him back up at that precise moment. All because of a report. Which Noctis had tried to read that morning, amidst exams and work and feeling the Wall dancing above him and the gossip wafting around, but of course Ignis didn’t want to hear about how he _tried_. It’s never about what Noctis tries to do: which is to carry on, hoping against hope that despite everything turning to crap, things will still work out okay, despite the ‘truth’.

Ignis just accepts what’s happening. Accepts that Regis is dying. That Noctis is going to be King and in turn one day he’ll be the one dying. Accepts that the two of them are drifting apart and losing the threads of their relationship as duty snips through them, scraping the blades along the remaining lines that quiver in wait. Noct feels like he’s spiralling out of control whilst everything quakes and bounces off of him and hits his advisor square in the face, the latter showing nary a modicum of expression for it. Ignis accepts that Noctis is losing him, and it doesn’t seem to bother him, whilst Noctis feels as if he can barely keep it together because of it.

“Look kiddo, I get that Ignis can be a little… argh, I don’t know- stoic? Remote? I don’t know the word to use for him, but you know what I mean.”

Noctis side-eyes his Shield as he waves the pastry through the air, groping for meaning as he speaks. The lowering sun warms the sweat shivers along Noct’s back as he rolls crumbs between his fingers. He couldn’t throw out those sweets Ignis had left behind the night before, when Noctis had shouted at him and Ignis had stormed out, but he can’t eat them now either, as he sits on the grass in the garden of the Amicitia household. At least there’s Gladio to help him out, having wolfed down one already and conducting advice with another as an able baton. He’s got a lot to thank Gladio for today actually, if not for rescuing his miserable ass from wasting another afternoon at the arcade decidedly not dealing with his feelings, then for actually forcing out the words that had been threatening to splutter out from his lips since he saw that image of his father yesterday.

Talk had turned to Ignis because Gladio’s perception had always been impeccable. He’d been taught to analyse a hostile situation from all angles, probe and contest and inquire, and Ignis was so closely entwined with Noct’s day to day life that Gladio couldn’t help but ask if anything had happened. Noctis had been a little light-footed on how severe the falling out had been and what had been said, but he reckoned Gladdy didn’t need all the grisly details. He probably guessed about most of it already.

Noctis sees Gladio who still holds his pastry aloft to the sun, the cake looking dainty and demure between his thick fingers, and despite it all, there’s a smirk fighting to form on his face. Gladio catches it and pokes at him, causing a brief war of thumbs before he shakes his head and regards his Prince affectionately, weighing up the situation.

“About Iggy, Noct. At the end of the day, I know he acts like nothing bothers him, but he’s still human, like you and me. And he’s there to talk to, like you do with me. Tell him what’s bugging you, see what he says- can’t be anything wrong with that.”

Gladio gets to his feet and helps Noctis up, gathering together the training swords and his blazer. He hands Noctis his keys, a subtle prompting to go and face the music.

“The Six knows, he’d move Eos itself to fix anything for you.”

 

* * *

 

Noctis chews on Gladio’s words as he trudges back home, numb to how Insomnia operates around him during rush hour. Maybe he should have been a little more honest with his Shield about how bad things are between himself and his Advisor, because Noct figures that if there is anything left to save between himself and Iggy, then the fixing had better come from him. It’s so damn frustrating. He can’t help feeling it, he can’t do anything to stop it- he’s just so tired though. And then there’s Regis (something that no one can fix, no one at all) and his duty as Prince and everything else that reminds Noctis of why he can’t have a normal life and a dad who isn’t dying and friends who aren’t affiliated with everything royal (there’s Prompto, who’s wonderfully away from it all, but that can’t last for long). Even his crush is a complicated puzzle whom he can’t have fun with and flirt on and instead sees him as just a series of tasks to be completed.

The tasks thing. That has got to change. That is what Noctis has to fix. He’s known this for a while of course. He’s known that he should have been doing better at keeping his life running, because then Retainer Ignis wouldn’t have grown so fierce, so powerful at throwing up the blocks of distance. But it doesn’t matter what happened then- it’s about what matters now. Noct is at risk of losing Ignis more than ever, so he’s got to try and get it together, and Noctis knows at least how to try, if nothing else.

He races back to his apartment and cleans and scrubs until his nails start to crack. He does his homework properly, and he reads the report too, annotating like hell even though he thinks he’s writing gibberish and sticking down tabs for the sheer hell of it. It’s all feeling rather capable and successful right up until he attempts to make a dinner that is a little more elaborate than his usual fares of omelettes and pancakes, and before he can do anything he’s gone and killed a fucking frying pan.

He gives up then. Dragging a hand over his face and looking at the massacre of soggy salad and the carcasses of utensils that are caked in burnt bits. Noct has tried but it’s not enough and he flails into bed, waiting for the inevitable lecture about whatever he’s botched today plus the addition of wrecking the kitchen and the argument from yesterday. He jumps awake as he hears the front door shut, panicking and rushing out of bed. Pinching at his cheeks to try and mould himself into a look of placid awareness before he tip-toes into the kitchen area, schoolbag over his shoulder to add to the casualness. He braces himself for today’s Retainer Ignis, for the fallout of last night, for the scoldings of old-

None of it happens.

“I spoke out of turn last time.” Ignis looks doggedly at his cup of noodles, mouth set. Noctis almost drops his fork but saves himself, managing to turn the sudden admission into a request by him for more pastries. They spend the rest of their rag-a-tag meal in near silence, even as Noctis’s heart pounds thunderously. He can’t figure out what this _means_ : an Iggy who isn’t… who isn’t doing what he’s usually doing. An Iggy who is admitting something wrong. Noctis wants to say something, anything, to fill the quiet. To tread his feet firmly in this new setting. Maybe Gladio was right after all.

“Thank you for dinner, even if we had to deviate from your original plans.”

Noctis blinks. Ignis is shuffling on his coat: bag on his shoulder, phone in hand. Shit, it’s after seven, Ignis is about to leave. They’ve essentially not said very much to each other and they haven’t… _talked_ … about yesterday. Not really. Noctis picks at the cuff of his shirt and gapes at the floor, wondering. He should say something. He should.

“No problem.” It’s a fight not to physically wince at himself. “You coming over tomorrow?”

“There’s no need. I’ll pick you up for Glaive initiation ceremony on Sunday.”

Sunday. That’s three days away. By then it will be too long a time to bring this all back up, to bring back up this liminal moment between them that speaks of temporary truce and an asking for light absolution. By Sunday it will be gone and Noctis won't be able to make it come back- gods, he’s not making sense, is he? But Noctis is panicking. He needs to clasp on to what’s happening right now, this moment of respite, this moment that almost feels like it’s _them_ again, Noct and Iggy, and say something. Because if things go back to how they were last week, he won’t be able to stand it again.

“Okay. Sounds… good.”

“Do you need me to come over tomorrow evening?”

Noctis snaps his head up, mouth clamping shut tight on what is almost an automatic yes-

_‘Please don’t leave me. I’m so fucking tired. I don’t want you to go.’_

“It’s okay. I’ll see you Sunday.”

It doesn’t work. He sounds so off, talking through clenched teeth, and Ignis notices, pausing in the act of looking for his keys, head tilted. Noctis finds his eyes directed back at the floor, curling his hands. He needs to get a grip on himself.

“Noct…”

He keeps his gaze stuck to the floor. He didn’t do too bad a job vacuuming, if he might say so himself. If he keeps looking at the state of the carpet, then he can just get through whatever Ignis is going to say next and then let the man go home so he doesn’t have to spend any more time with his idiot Prince.

“The question may seem painfully stupid and irrelevant to ask, however-” Noct hears a deep intake of breath, a shuffling of metal as Ignis fiddles with his keys.

“Is there anything bothering you?”

Noctis starts. Not at all sure that he heard that question right. Anything bothering him? Fuck it- _everything_ is bothering him. But that’s not what Ignis is looking for by asking. This is a direct lifeline, an offering to talk about last night properly, where Noct can’t bring it up himself. But enough. He’s bothered Ignis enough. Like he has his whole life just by being born and having Ignis assigned to him. Noctis shakes his head and hopes he looks composed and unbothered as he gathers up the courage to look his advisor in the eyes, trying not to feel shaken up at how soft they look in the lamplight.

“Nah, I guess… I guess I’m just tired.”

There’s a pause, and Noctis knows he hasn’t persuaded him. But Ignis lets it be, nodding to himself. Noctis takes that as a dismissal, wandering back into the kitchen, pretending that he’s thinking of making a hot chocolate rather than the truth of the matter which is he’s so lost and anxious, he has to act at doing something until Ignis leaves.

“Why don’t you go to bed? You aren’t looking a hundred per cent.”

Noctis opens a cupboard; the wrong one for the chocolate powder, as he knows it is. “Do I ever?”

“Fair point.” There’s a more decisive playing with keys as Ignis picks the one he needs. “Good night, Noctis.”

Noctis slams the cupboard door shut and the noise is a crack at the obstinate air. It makes Ignis stop right before he puts his key in the door, and Noctis condemns the hitching noise he hears coming from his own throat.

“Um… Iggy.”

Ignis turns, a slight crease forming between his brows.

“Just wanted to say thanks. For everything, I mean.”

The frown deepens, hand dropping from the door. Ignis opens his mouth, about to thank him, or protest maybe- but Noctis won’t let him. The slap of sound was the final fracture that has at last caused Noctis to crumble, and his thoughts and his mouth run a mile, refusing to stop.

“You do a lot and I don’t make it easy, and yeah. You- you did have a point. I… I know I’m not the easiest Prince to deal with and I make your job really shitty and difficult to do and-”

Nails meet his palms, digging and digging as he does with his words. He’s feeling so out of control, but he doesn’t know how else to put it forward to Ignis. He is halted by the thud of a satchel hitting the floor. Ignis approaches him with a face of horror.

“Noct- _Noct_.”

Noctis shuffles back slightly. Not afraid, just mortified. Furious with himself. Shaking his head, eyes looking at anywhere apart from his gobsmacked advisor. He knew he should have just kept his mouth shut.

“I didn’t- there’s nothing ‘difficult’ about you at all. It has always been a privilege for me to be at your side and as I said earlier-”

A hysterical little laugh escapes from Noct and he shakes his head again, “you don’t have to lie, Iggy.”

“I’m _not-_ ”

There’s a tentative hand on his shoulder, and Noct has no choice but to stare back at Ignis, to see that pain and confusion up front. He bites his lip, hating himself again. He just keeps causing Ignis trouble-

“I like being with you Noct.” Ignis’s hand tightens as he speaks, slowly, like he’s trying to weigh in on every word. It’s strange, the way his eyes harden as he continues to regard Noctis. In any other place or time, Noctis would have a hard time looking away.

“I _like_ being with you through the good times and the bad, and I always have done. It’s my choice…”

He trails off because he’s felt Noctis trembling underneath his fingertips, and Noctis swears to himself. He’s shaking like a toddler being told off. Shit, why can’t he just control himself better? Stop being so at the mercy of his feelings? Ignis’s hand drifts away from him, like he’s fearful of breaking him by his touch, and Noctis detests himself all the more. He wiggles his shoulders, trying to smile or do something with his mouth that isn’t just a thin, wobbly line.

“Sorry, Igs. I didn’t mean to make it all weird like that.” And sad. And awkward. As usual. Because he’s the sad, awkward Prince. He steps back again, offering clemency for Ignis. A chance out of this ridiculous situation before it can get any worse. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, I’m sorry- I should’ve realised-”

Ignis stops himself once more, his hand still in the air, oddly enough reminding Noctis of Gladio earlier. Only there’s nothing amusing here. Ignis looks as lost as Noctis feels, cheeks pale. His shoulders heave as he pushes his glasses up his nose, and they both just look at each for a number of moments that press on for far too many.

“I would always have you speak your mind to me, Noctis.” Ignis offers at last, sounding worried. “As I always aim to do for you.”

Noctis feels his back stiffen in response. “Have you, though?”

“No.” Ignis recognises, his gaze turning away for the first time, “No, I’m afraid that recently, I haven’t.”

“What’s on your mind now?”

Funny, this was meant to be about Noctis saying how he feels. Yet he kinda knew since Gladio first told him what to say that he wouldn’t be able to do it. There was too much crap, too much complication knotting up his heart, and that was just when he thought about Iggy and their status as friends- he couldn’t even envision dealing with the more embarrassing thoughts he’s had to entertain as of late. But Noctis has wanted for so long for Ignis just to talk to him again. To take them back to somewhat like they used to be before duty and formality got in the way and turned it all so appalling.

Noctis wonders if Ignis is actually going to say what’s on his mind now. If he is, then it’s probably going to be a more delicate barrage of rightly earned criticisms. Noctis is ready to listen this time. He knows he should listen, and he’s going to take what his advisor tells him to task. He’s going to try anything to make things easier for both of them. He watches carefully as Ignis struggles with himself, biting his lip.

“I wish…” Ignis mumbles, resting a palm on the countertop, staring at it consciously, “I wish I knew how to make things better for you. Duty be damned.”

The breath stops in Noctis’s chest and there’s a dull humming in his ears. He doesn’t know what to say to that. His immediate reaction is to say something maybe snarky. Or jokey. Or anything now because suddenly he feels like he’s going to cry, which is absurd, but he can’t make his mouth work at all. He doesn’t actively feel himself faltering towards Ignis, just the drop of his heavy, sore skull as he headbutts Ignis’s shoulder, eyes closed and teeth clenched together, the coarse material of Ignis’s coat pressing against his forehead.

Ignis tenses, and for a split second Noctis panics because Ignis might not understand or push him away, but there was never any real worry about that. Arms wrap around his shoulders as Ignis pulls him into a proper hug and Noctis can’t help but dig deep. Breathing into the coat and the slight nook of exposed skin near Ignis's neck. They don’t hug. They haven’t hugged in years. But Ignis feels good. Smells good too. Noctis holds on to him like he’s trying not to fall through the sky, feeling a hand at the back of his head. Ignis’s confession which spoke of so much pain and respect and sincerity is toning up the humming he hears, pooling up in his brain with the urgent warmth against his body, secure and present and _there_. There at last.

“Would you like me to come by tomorrow?” Ignis’s voice is easy and low but it rumbles through Noct’s entire body, kicking a hotness up below his ribcage. He’s noticed how he’s changed the wording the second time.

“Please.” Noct replies, pulling back. “But Iggy-”

They split, and Noctis regrets it tremendously but he knows he can’t let it dawdle on. His skin is tingling; it’s tough to think. His eyes flicker to that mouth, those tender eyes. Noct remembers what he was going to say.

“Don’t like… bring any stuff or do any cleaning or any of that crap, alright? Just be here.” Noctis swings his arms at his sides, feeling how heavy they are. “I mean- I don’t know what we can do but… I dunno, let’s play games or go out and watch a movie or something.”

There’s a spasm of a pained look on Ignis’s face, and in that look Noctis gets to know that yes, Ignis knew about it too. Of how much had gotten lost between them. The gaping hole where friendship and an easiness used to fill; their roles as Prince and Retainer continuing to chip at the edges of the crevice. Noctis feels guilty as hell for asking Ignis to try and help him make it better again, because he’s wrecked the man’s life enough, but he has to.

“A film sounds good.” Ignis offers, mild and courteous. “I’m sure there’s plenty that you recommend I see.”

“Yeah. Yeah I do. Yeah.” Can Noctis hear himself? Of course he can. “It’s a date.”

He’s such a fucking idiot.

Ignis huffs, a little smile appearing. They’re still standing rather close together, again, closer than they’ve been in a long while, and Noctis can barely breathe for it. He’s avoided looking at Ignis properly as of late from distraction and anger. But seeing him now, a face he knows better than his own, he’s stunned. Lingering underneath that heavy curtain of hair lies sharp cheekbones and an even sharper gaze. He drinks in those eyes, if he can, the chips of mellow emerald that offer back, reading every detail in his own face. Something shifts. What was sentimental and soft suddenly becomes very heated. Ignis moves. His hand comes back up, and Noctis honestly thinks in a short moment that Ignis is going to touch his face. It’s silly. Heedless. Downright infantile. But his mind races and the hand lingers in the air just a fraction too long, too close to his cheek.

“Ignis-” Noctis manages to choke out his name as the hand lands firmly on his shoulder.

“See you tomorrow, Noct.”

Noctis can barely nod. Ignis picks his bag back up and then he’s out the front door.

Noctis can still hear humming. He’s stumbling out of the kitchen area like he’s drunk, half out of it when he crashes on to his sofa but totally alert of the absolute burning in his chest, the funny fluttering ache that spreads and spirals past his navel. His skin is akin to disintegrating, crumbling, pushing against the crushing weight of total shittiness that he’s feeling. Ignis’s hand lingers in the corner of his eye, the feel of his chest across his own, his mouth wet.

Noctis rolls over on to his front with a groan, shoving his face hard into a cushion. His hips and crotch protest at the position and his fingers twitch, knowing what they should do as the urge races on. Noctis fights it, because he’d rather asphyxiate himself right into the couch with the sheer embarrassment of it all. He’ll pay for it soon, but he reckons hey, he deserves it. He deserves to suffer because after all he’s just put Ignis through, he then has the temerity to start getting hard over how they hugged and how Noctis thought Ignis was going to touch his face. It’s pathetic.

Noctis kicks the armrest. Ignis busts his ass doing everything for the Prince, and the Prince behaves like this. Princes shouldn’t be doing that. They shouldn’t be getting attracted to their advisors. They shouldn’t have to have their own asses emotionally kicked as high as the Wall to be able to do something so simple as reading a report or keeping their apartment tidy. They shouldn’t be so damn tired either, but here Noct is. Tired as hell. And aroused to stupor. It’s inevitable, he can’t ignore it, and as soon as the shame is over, Noctis retreats back to the sofa and crunches up half-naked into a terrible ball, mentally crucifying himself. He wakes up with late morning sun blasting through the living room, his back snapping with pain like an elastic band and his dick hard, feeling as if he’s been run over with a concrete roller.

His phone is ringing from its discarded position on the floor, the battery blinking red and Gladio’s dorky selfie face bursting from the screen. Noctis has overslept by four hours and missed his morning training session with Cor and some of the Glaives. Great. 


End file.
